Family, friends and society all demand things from us, behaviors, procedures, manners, interactions, tact, etc etc etc. But in trying to answer everyone else’s requirements/demands, we never really discover who we are.

And so, starting today, starting the moment I began to realize this: I will live with all the passion, personality and love that I am.

We are each unique, and were never meant to be replicas of a divine being, but rather us living as a divine being. Me, and all that I am, my sense of humor, my personality, my passions, all living as a divine being. It is all about how we live.

I have met many people who…to be honest…they live such a pale life, when there is such magnificent, colorful passion and joy just waiting to burst through. They are living in pastel, when the full pallet of color is available to them.

Look back at your life, and see (particularly for women) how you changed your behavior because you wanted to fit in, to be accepted, to be liked, to be respected, to be envied, to make people proud, to impress, to fit in with a partner’s friends and associates. You will see, time and time again, how you ‘played a role’. This is why so many of us don’t really know who we are.

The funny thing for me is…when I am writing I know exactly who my characters are, and when I am writing I know that that is who and what I am: a writer.

I have had a tendency to behave conservatively with other people, and that stops now. I went to dinner a few weeks ago, dressed up in my jeans, high heeled red boots, and black leather jacket, and I was just me in all my glory for the night. And you know what? It felt great. I talked to the people sitting around me and we all had a great time. I think it was a better night because I was being my passionate self and not the conservative ‘Mr X’s wife’.

So, here’s my suggestion. Let’s all start living with a whole lot more passion and personality. Stop hiding, stop being conservative.

My Dad and I often have the discussion of ‘characters’ and he (being born in 1929) worked with men who had survived WWII. Some of these men were real characters! They had been through something so brutal, but they knew what was important. Today’s corporate world and bosses are all about money and profit, and making themselves feel important. It’s power games, and they have never ever had to truly test themselves in battle. And don’t you dare talk to me of board room battles, because they are not battles. Compared to a war, to life and death struggles, they are petty arguments amongst power hungry people. That’s all.

People who have faced their mortality return home changed by that experience. Whilst we who have not faced our mortality are still buying into this plastic false, surface living life.

No more!!!

I’m tired of talking to people who are afraid to fully live. Let’s live, with passion and personality!! Don’t be afraid to be you.

Forget the pastel colors, forget the beige life. Let us live the full pallet of colors!!!

I have my own work to do, a family to raise, chores to attend to, martial arts to learn and practice, books to read. I just do not have the time to read all these emails, nor the money to buy what they want to sell me.

And so I delete delete delete.

I am actually quite tired of people trying to sell me things.

Perhaps one day, they might offer me something irresistible, and I might have the time and money, and so I do not quit their lists. But, nonetheless, when I am busy (90% of the time) I delete delete delete.

People tell me ‘you’ve got to grow your email list’…and, you know what, I just can’t make myself do it. I can’t put people’s names on a list. I have a small group of friends with whom I share a piece of my writing, maybe once a month, as I feel once a month is enough. But I don’t add every person who ever emails me to that list. If they want me to email them once a month, then they are welcome to ask.

I have a website, facebook, and this blog, and I figure, all I can do is connect with you in my own way. I am here. I will read as much of your work as I can in the time that I have available, and leave a comment, and maybe you will do the same. I believe it’s all about building relationships with people.

It’s not about email lists. It’s about people, it’s about relationships.

Life sometimes throws challenges at us, steering us off down one path only to do a quick 90 degree turn and spit us off in an unexpected direction.

Many a time this throws us into such a confused state that we don’t know what to do. We feel we have failed. Yet, there is no failure in ‘change’.

Why do these things happen? Why do we get sent off in one direction, following all the signs and guidance, and then things don’t quite pan out? The problem lies with our perception. We perceive that it is all about the goal. After all, we are working towards an achievement, a success, a victory, that is what it is all about, right? Says who?

The goal is, in reality, our compass point. It gives us our direction. We know where to head to, we know what to do, we know where we are going.

What if what we are really supposed to do is get three quarters of the way along that path? What if that is all we are supposed to do? What if it is at that point that we need to be re-directed to something else? What if it is more like: walk seven steps towards the tree, then turn left and face the red letterbox, walk five steps forwards, then turn right, face the old cottage and walk twenty one steps forwards. What if it is not the tree that is the goal? What if it is not the red letterbox that is the goal? What if it is the cottage that is the goal?

You see? We become so fixated on what we are aimed at, at our target, that we don’t even know that it is simply a direction on the map of our life that will take us to where we are supposed to be going?

And that is why there is no failure? If you feel you have failed…you have misunderstood the journey.

Sometimes the journeys are about gaining skills and understandings so that we are ready when we are on target for the right goal. You may be ready for something today that you were not ready for a year ago, but because of the journey you have walked you are now ready. Or it may be that you are not ready for something today, but over the next year or two you will gain what you need to be ready for that something.

If you have been working towards a goal, and it didn’t pan out, don’t quit, don’t throw your arms in the air and give up. Keep going. There is another direction coming, and all you need to do is be open to noticing it. Too often people do give up, convinced that the compass point was the goal and that they have utterly failed. They sit down, at the very place where they were supposed to commence another step of the journey, in a slightly different direction.

Don’t be so focused on the goal that you fail to understand that it is on the journey that we learn the most, not at the goal.

[This blog entry is also on my website at: www.robynmspeed.com/journal.htm]

Answer: NOTHING can keep a BORN WRITER down!

If I was born to write, don’t you think I know that in my heart and Soul and deep into my bones!

Okay, so I did not make round 3 of the Next Top Spiritual Author competition…but will that stop me, will that shut me up? No way. If anything, that competition has fired me up, prepared me, in some ways it turned the confident little mouse into a KNOWING Tiger.

As with anything that happens in our life, we must allow ourselves to experience and release the emotions that arise, in a calm, loving, a peaceful way. The faster we can do that the faster we can let them go. If we do not do that, then we will not be ready for what is coming…and oh, boy is there something coming my way!!

What is coming? I don’t know … yet. But I know it is coming, it is a Soul deep knowing. And what am I going to do in the meantime? I am going to keep going, to keep writing, to keep talking to you, to keep evolving spiritually, to keep teaching. I will nurture every contact and connection I made, knowing that those connections are what it is all about. I will write and write and write and write.

A friend asked me what i was passionate about? My answer: writing, spiritual evolution, and people.

Obviously I am disappointed…but more than that, I feel that I have let every one down.

I knew that putting myself ‘out there’ was necessary to get the support and the votes, but I also knew that if I did not make it it would be a very public failure.

However…I have received rejections before (though they have been private!)…and I have bounced back and kept writing. I think the manuscript I am currently working on is the greatest story I have ever written!!! I will keep walking, keep taking one step after the other.

No fiction made it into Round 3 … and so maybe fiction never really had a chance? I don’t know. What I DO know is that humankind have ALWAYS taught through story. Before written language was created, we were story tellers.

I don’t know what is coming into my life now….I don’t know what plan the Universe has for me. But I will wait and see, and until it shows up I will continue to do all I can to support and help YOU in your life, to offer understandings and guidance that I know will make a difference.

I had so hoped to bring you good news today, and I am sorry that I have not been able to…

I have done all I can. I have motivated, inspired, and badgered.

Have I done enough?

Do I deserve to proceed to Round 3? Do I have an original manuscript? Can I write well?

To the first question … the judging panel, the publisher, and the public will be the ones to decide that. To Questions two and three: Yes! Yes!

I do have an original manuscript, which fills a gaping gap in the visionary fiction market, and HELL YES I can write!!!

To people who did not bother to vote …. you DID vote: you voted ‘No’. It really is that clear. There were two options presented to ALL people who were contacted by anyone in this competition. You voted yes or no.

Indifference = No.

Didn’t bother to look = No.

Too lazy to care = No.

I’m too busy = No.

I’d rather play computer games = No.

There were MANY ways for you to vote No. And only ONE way to vote Yes.

Did you vote Yes?

The state of our world is a direct result of: indifference, laziness, complacency. When you do NOTHING, you are making a decision which says ‘I don’t care’.

Well, guess what? I DO care. I care about the books, about spiritual evolution, about the world, and I commit every part of myself to the work that I do. I AM a writer, and a teacher. I teach through my writing.

If you can’t take the time to have a look that’s fine … that’s your ‘No’. But don’t give me an excuse! Don’t give ANYONE an excuse!

Do you look for answers, only to turn away from opportunities?

Do you look for knowledge, only to reject that which is offered?

Do you expect it to come in a specific form?

Let me tell you: answers and knowledge come from everywhere.

Wisdom is shared through those who have dedicated themselves to their spiritual evolution, and who have the capacity and willingness to share. And that level of wisdom depends upon the person.

Look at what is offered.

Here is the point of this message where I extend to you and invitation:

YOU look at chapter one of my manuscript, and see if you resonate with it. Read the words, feel the words, and tell me … why do you assume that this work is not what you have been looking for?

Read it.

Then you will know.

The link is www.nexttopauthor.com/?aid=566

Here you can see Chapter One. Whether you look at the proposal or not is immaterial, I want you to read the chapter – it is only 5 pages.

If you see merit. If this work touches you…vote for it. I am trying (with massive universe support) to get this work into the world, and into the hands of people we desire to spiritually grow and evolve.

Your support (vote) will help to move this work into Round 3 of the competition (along with 24 others). From there it will be judged upon its own merits, and after that one winner will be offered a publishing contract by Hampton Roads Publishing Company.

To all people who vote, and would like to red Chapter Two as well, just email me that you have voted and would like Chapter Two.

Please don’t assume I have nothing to offer, look for yourself and then decide.

With love

and gratitude

Robyn M Speed

When I get to Round 3, I'm buying these boots!

Eleven days left of voting time in Round 2.

Eleven days to focus everything on a goal.

Eleven days to ‘see’ the goal manifest.

And at the end of the eleven day: surrender. For I will have done all that I could do.

Whatever the outcome I know that it will be what the Universe needs at this time…and I will accept it.

However, I still have eleven days in which to garner more support and votes, and so I will not ease up until the eleven days are over!

Now … people … I need your help here. Seriously. I promised myself that if I make it to Round 3 I am going to buy a pair of boots! I won’t buy them if I don’t win, as I don’t want ‘pity boots’, but if I make it to Round 3 they will be my ‘victory boots’. And, if you saw the state of the boots I am currently wearing you would take pity on my and help me to get this new pair of boots!

Why is winning this competition so important to me? Because I have been trying to get to that goal for a loooong time. Winning a major literary award in New Zealand should have made a difference, it should have persuaded a New Zealand publisher to publish me, to see that I had value as a writer. Instead they fell into ‘oh, we cannot predict that we could sell enough copies, so we’ll have to say no.’ Given that there are no New Zealand visionary fiction writers, I do not know why they could not accept that the work had a place.

When I was promoting myself in Round 1 I talked to many people. They affirmed that there is a gap in the market! Where books such as The Celestine Prophecy etc left off, nothing new has arrived. It is the same level of soft teachings. Brilliant teachings, yes, but readers are ready for more. Visionary fiction is the one genre that must evolve. The next level of work is mine.

Winning the Next Top Spiritual Author competition will get my work out into the world, into the hands of the readers who are already telling me ‘I can’t wait to read the whole book’!

All I am asking from you is a few minutes out of your life. Please, take a look at my proposal and chapter and if you see merit in my work, please vote. And please tell everyone you know.

www.nexttopauthor.com/?aid=566