In Secrets Of An Unborn Child the lives of two sisters intersect. Clare loses her baby and Anna, in the midst of an emotional crisis, inadvertently abandons her child. The film follows the two sisters as they overcome their worst fears and help each other rebuild their lives.

It isn’t everyday that you meet women filmmakers who have the raw courage to crack open their hearts and so intimately reveal very personal pain.  Gabriella and Evie, as she’s called, are two mothers (yes, they both have 6-year-old boys) who are passionate about letting the grace of learning to let go, reach out and gently touch the souls of those who are afraid that if they do let go, they’ll lose their child forever. Experienced filmmakers, Gabriela and Evie embrace film as a pathway to bless the human spirit. If you are or know a  mother who has lost a child to illness, injury, war, violence, accident, please read and share this post. And know, that in your journey, you are not alone.

And if you are a mother who is blessed with a child, then join us in celebrating life, resiliency and the power of the human heart.

Tell me the story of how you each became filmmakers.

Gabriela: Evelyne and I have been acting in and writing plays since we were six years old.  We grew up under Apartheid in South Africa. Freedom of speech was sanctioned. Film was a safe place to express ourselves, to escape the lies and to tell the truth.  After immigrating Evelyne went on to theatre school at LACC and studied Screen Writing at the Writers’ Bootcamp in Los Angeles. Evelyne has directed one short film and hopes to direct more in the future. I attended UCLA as a theater student, but was always drawn to the Film department.  After graduating UCLA I learned Film Editing and I wrote, acted in and directed my first short film THE LAST GUNSHOT about the social implications of Apartheid. It screened in over 30 festivals including the Cannes Short Film Corner. After that I was hooked. I have directed over ten short films since then. They have played in festivals all over the world including Sundance, and won several awards. I am very excited to be making my first feature film with Evelyne.

What part of filmmaking is “the energy that lights you up” for you?

Gabriela: I love the entire process of making a film from writing to filming and editing. I also love the collaborative process of filmmaking. I see film as a spiritual medium. One where you distill an aspect of the human experience, examine, it, live with it, experience it and grow from it. I love that is a medium that combines all other mediums such as writing, painting, acting, editing, etc. I also love that it allows the audience to experience a world through images.  I have always likened film to hypnosis as it affects people on a deep subconscious level. That to me is very powerful.

Tell us about your journey with Secrets of an Unborn Child. This is a very personal project for you, one that has required you to be vulnerable and share your own grief and journey via the two protagonists – where did you find it in your soul to bring this personal pain out into a very public light?

Gabriela: I have always worked from personal experience in my films. As a South African immigrant I grew up during Apartheid and I witnessed a lot of fear and violence. My first short film THE LAST GUNSHOT explored these themes and the familial implications of Apartheid. In some of my other short films I’ve explored themes of intimacy, isolation and violence against women.  SECRETS OF AN UNBORN CHILD was motivated by a real experience I had when due to complications I gave birth to my baby at 7 months. He struggled to survive, but didn’t. It was a painful and difficult experience. I started to write the script with Evelyne. I was compelled to explore the theme of survival after the loss of a loved one. Writing this project has helped me heal. Finding an outlet for pain has always helped me feel like less of a victim and less vulnerable. The pain I felt after losing my baby was overwhelming. I hope that this project can help those experiencing loss feel less alone; and let them know that some day they will feel happy and alive again.

Evelyne: When Charlie was born too early, with a terrible infection, they tried everything: blood transfusions and a life support machine. After just 11 days the doctors told them it was hopeless. They were faced with a very hard decision. They decided to turn off the machine. His hands went into Mudra as if giving thanks to his parents for letting him go. Gaby suffered from depression, physical ailments and negative thoughts, that maybe it was her fault somehow. And then we began to write together. Write about her struggle, the negative voices that plagued her. The guilt that somehow she may have caused this. The voices she longed to hear began, “Mommy, I’m OK. It wasn’t your fault.”

This film is the story we want to tell of two sisters who come together to help each other. The sister Anna, who I play in the film, is lost. Stuck in the role that so many parents get into. Full of frustration, anger, overwhelmed at parenting and her child. She has an emotional breakdown and walks away from her small son, leaving him in a boiling hot car. We wanted to tell the story about what it means to love and loose. What is means to make bad decisions, and the road back to love.

What is your dream for this film? What do you want it to do in the world?

Evelyne: Our dream for the film is that it reaches a wide audience of people who it can inspire and help.  Three million babies die each year. This is more common than we know. It is not talked about a lot. How can you heal from loss? What does it do to a marriage, etc.  And then on the flip side there are so many parents who don’t realize having a child is a gift. There is a staggering amount of child abuse and children being forgotten in automobiles each year. I want people to realize how lucky they are and that we all have an incredible ability to find god, love, and heal if you dare.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing the script?  The most rewarding?

Gabriela: The most challenging part for me was honoring the truth of my experience and not backing away from it. Having the guts to communicate the depth of the anxiety, fear and sadness I was experiencing.  The most rewarding for me was that as I healed, my character healed. The more Clare listens to her own voice, meditates and gets in touch with that deeper part of herself the more rewarding the process became.

Evelyne: The most challenging thing for me was making sure I did not dismiss or downplay what this experience was like for Gabriela. The pain, the fear of physical ailments manifesting and the voices she heard calling her from another place were all real. Allowing her to put that on the page then making sure they pushed against Anna (my character) in the film. Anna is the opposite of Clare (Gabriela’s character) she pretends everything is OK. She can’t face the pain inside and tries to deny what she has done to her own child. The two sisters ultimately push each other to face their darkness. I also wanted to make the story is engaging for everyone, not just those who have experienced loss. It is about being open to Consciousness or God and your subconscious. To listen, to hear, really hear your soul. Everyone can relate to this. How am I alive, really alive? How do I love? And do I have the courage to step into being alive, not live my life on the outside.

Even though the pain of your characters is based on your own, your characters have a life of their own and they are not you – what has it been like working with them? What have Clare and Anna taught you? How have they surprised you?

Evelyne and Gabriela: What a beautiful question. Writing Clare has taught us that we all have a process that helps us heal. As a society we can be so judgmental when it comes to healing and death. We live in a society that says “get on with it, put on a happy face.” The sisters’ father in the film, Monty, tells Clare “Come on, get on with it; people lose babies all the time.” Clare taught us that every phase of life has a purpose. That we learn from every experience. That pain can be an incredible teacher. We don’t need pain to grow, but if you are faced with it don’t deny it. Clare teaches us not to run from pain just because it is uncomfortable. Be with it, connect with it, connect with yourself, be still, that’s when true healing can occur.

Anna, on the other hand, reminds us to listen. She gets too stressed, too flooded by life that she can’t relax when her child is talking about birds that can talk. She is driving, lost in frenzy; then leaves her screaming child in a boiling hot car. Anna is who we all can become if we don’t stop, breath and take life in. We think of her often in the frenzy of life.

Was there a point where you nearly gave up on this film? If so, what motivated you to keep going?

Evelyne and Gabriela: Sometimes Gabriela worried that reliving the story, the trauma would not be good for her health and psyche, but it has been just the opposite. This journey has given her energy to inspire others, to share her journey. Healing is a process, it doesn’t happen over night. What definitely kept us going is that getting this story out there can help others not feel so alone.

How has this film affected your relationship as sisters?

Evelyne and Gabriela: Working on the film has helped us tremendously. We compliment each other. Gabriela is not afraid to go to the dark places and Evelyne likes to find the humor and irony. There is a lot of that in the script and we laugh alot at ourselves and at our characters.

How does your collaboration work?

Evelyne and Gabriela: We will talk about a scene, what we’re trying to say in it and then one of us will usually take a stab at it and the other one will then do the rewrite. Gabriela wrote all the internal dialogue and I would say “love it, or, wow, you went too far with that!” We help stretch each other. Some scenes we wrote five times. For example, we wanted to give  the character Michael (Clare’s husband) a voice, about how he feels with the loss. We tried everything and a physical action seemed to work best. It’s a painful, beautiful gesture that you can’t say with words.

Where are you at in your own spiritual journeys? What does “faith” mean to you now? 

Gabriela: My spiritual life deepened immensely after the loss of my baby. I tried desperately to understand why. I sought out the books of Louise Hay, which helped me. I read MANY MASTER, MANY LIVES by Brian Weiss. This book changed my life. It helped me understand the world in a different way. It helped me understand we truly are all connected and that we are all here to learn and grow. That nothing is random and life really is supposed to be full of joy. Another person that affected me deeply and helped me heal is Marianne Williamson. I began going to her talks on Monday nights. I felt so lucky to meet her, she was so open to me and really helped me. I began following and studying A COURSE IN MIRACLES. I continue to do the lessons each day. I really have learned that so much about our life is what we think; that we do have control over our thoughts and our mind. That each day, each minute, we can chose between love and feeling connected to something bigger, brighter and more beautiful or fear.

Evelyne: As an artist, as a mother, as a wife I think you get tested a lot. We’ll, I do.  I come up against my own beliefs opposed to others’ beliefs. And then I have to let go and breathe. We’re all in this together. I remind myself to come from love, and I meditate, find the quiet, so I can hear the silence, the soul, God, whatever you want to call it. I’ve seen miracles and magic in my own life that gives me faith. My own son was diagnosed with Legg Perthes disease.  I don’t think this is a random thing, I think it can be a gift for all of us, a gift we can give others. The night of my son’s diagnosis I felt an energy come into my room, spin around my son and that’s when I knew he would be okay. The world of healing came and found me. I didn’t seek it out, it found me. But that’s another story. On the day we said goodbye to Gabriela’s baby, Charlie, his hands went into mudra. I saw that as a sign he was going back to God and that blew me away. You can’t make that stuff up. If you’re open you can see it and there have been more miracles I have witnessed.

What role does fear and faith play in your creative life?

Gabriela: Creativity has always been an act of faith for me. When I feel any fear or negativity creep in I write about it or create something about it and that diminishes the fear. I think that’s why making this film continues to be so cathartic for me; it helped get me out of my fear.

Evelyne: I feel blessed, I know it sounds corny or crazy, but often when I write, it just comes through me. Later I read the draft of a script I’m working on and I think “How did I write that?” it just came through me.

How is it to be a mom and a writer and filmmaker and actresses?

Evelyne: Out boys are best friends. We are very lucky. We have play dates, they sword fight and we edit together. We have passionate conversations and our boys love being a part of it. The other day my son said to me” “Mommy, you talk to Auntie Gabriela five times a day. You have a lot to talk about!”

We are playing Clare and Anna in the film. We thought about maybe casting other actresses, but this film is tailor made for us. As ex-pats from South Africa, we also deal with violence in the film and motherhood. We have been acting together since we were little and this is a natural extension of that.

What is it like for you to be the scriptwriter and also the actress who must embody that character?

Evelyne: It’s wonderful; we know these characters so well. We have lived with them for such a long time. We’ve done writing and acting exercises with them, written their dreams, their best childhood memories and their secrets. It’s also intense to share the shadow side, but we feel so safe working together.  We have that sister bond where we can just give each other a look and we know what the other is thinking. We are both huge Ingmar Bergman fans. This is our Persona, our homage to Bergman.
–

Learn More and Support “Secrets of an Unborn Child” at Kickstarter.

Follow on Twitter: @Unbornchildmv

View Gabriela Tollman’s  website at http://www.gabrielatollman.com

“What’s next” drives us. And that’s a good thing. Dreams need persistent action to come true. There is much work to be done. Every minute spent on a dream adds up to its entirety.

What we need to be mindful of is that in the midst of all our work on the future, is the now.

The work we do to create, raise and see a dream mature into its fullest essence is the reality of our now. The fulfillment and success of that dream takes place every moment you spend in it. If you think that happiness, success, fulfillment are out there waiting for you (waiting for the dream to come true), you are mistaken.

They are here. Now.

If you’re a writer, the process of writing is your success, your fulfillment, the “living the life of your dream” part. It’s not out there waiting for you to realize some measure of external recognition and success. When you finish a project, you pretty much finish your role in it. You move on to the next project. When the writing is done, so are you.

There will never come a day when you will feel that you have “arrived” because the human spirit doesn’t work that way. One goal is replaced by a bigger one. That one becomes your driving force. “Making it”? Success in sales and revenue is just that. Sales and revenue. Money is money. You can earn it by laying pavement or by writing a novel. Either way, it is money. “Fame”? Fame has a high cost and very little true reward to the individual. It sets you on a platform for higher income and greater reach, perhaps, but it costs you most of your freedom.

Which leads me to the question: why do we do what we do? Laying pavement is hard physical labor, but you see a concrete result at the end of the day. Laying down words that will be cut, edited, thrown out later in the process offers far less reward.

Walk through book stores and look at the books relegated to the “bargain bin” – think about those authors. They worked just as hard as every other author. They put their soul into it. They spent the hours, days, minutes that you are spending now on your project. We all know that our work is fleeting.

That’s why you have to be in it for the process. Not the result. You have to love what you do. Love every minute of it, love the challenges, love the fear, love the uncertainty.

Love it because it makes you feel alive. Love it because you can’t imagine living your life any other way.

If you’re like most, revision is never done until you decide it’s done. Story is one of the only art forms that can always be improved, changed, re-directed, given new form. Because we spend so much time in revision, there are a few things we can be mindful of during the process.

It’s okay to feel lost.
We think we should always know where we’re going, don’t we? We get critical, trusted feedback; we take time to listen to our guidance on that feedback; we feel strong pressure to know where the story should be going from fade in to fade out. Some people swear by their ability to plot out their entire story from beginning to end. If that works for you, that’s wonderful. It doesn’t work for me. Story unfolds as I write it. I have a general understanding (usually) of the beginning and the end, with glimpses of points along the way. But for the most part, I don’t know what’s going to happen until it happens to the characters. I don’t know what they’re going to say until they say it.  That may sound very chaotic, but for me, it works. I am the container that the story flows from. I give it shape and form, a place for the characters to dwell. Knowing up front where we’re all going? Not going to happen. Feeling lost and completely blind at times is just part of the art form.  Which leads me to the next point.

Time is irrelevant, even with deadlines.
You’ve got a deadline – what do you do? Keep working. But work without striving. If you strive, you’ll lock down your ability to be receptive. Being receptive is 90% of your job. Keep an open mind toward time and understand that you can’t force it. So, take breaks. Step away. Listen to different music. Be present and available, there to receive. Keep a mindset that you’re on duty. Some of that time, you’ll only be on call. Waiting for the characters, waiting for something (you may never know what) to occur where the next scene or thought formulates. You may need to sit at your screen and just write. You’ll get a feel for the story’s rhythm, how the characters prefer to work with you, and the ebb and tide of your own process as a writer.  Just flow, don’t force.

Characters need you more than ever to be perceptive.
Revision is stressful on you and even more stressful on your characters. If you’ve got a solid draft down, they’ve done considerable work with and for you. They’ve poured their energy and emotions into it far more than you have. And let’s face it, most of story is conflict and that’s a tough energy to sustain and endure. Give them a break. You’ve got to get characters to work with you, even if they disagree at first at the changes you (as the Story Director) are asking them to make. Include them in your decision-making process and they’ll surprise you with their willingness to dig deeper. Your protagonist and antagonist carry the most weight and should have the most influence on you. If you think of your characters as a cast (and bear in mind the actors who will embody their roles) and yourself as the Story Director, you’ll be able to ask characters to do or try new things — to fight harder, to reveal more, to defy each other — with the safety that at the end of the day, they’re all still friends.

Characters need you more than ever to be perceptive. You need to be available, there as coach, confidant, leader, ally, therapist, and witness. You will never work more closely with your characters than you will during revision. Build your team. Be compassionate. Be tough. And remember, no matter what, you’re responsible for making the final decisions.

Doubts are normal and necessary.
We all go through it. Doubts, fears, wondering how we’re ever going to pull this off. We run up against challenges that make us quiver. This happens to every one. Success just makes it worse. Doubts are part of the process and this never changes. But think about it — doubts mean we’ve come to a place that is stretching us to either grow as a writer (and a person) or quit. There are no other options. If you grow, you expand your writing acumen, your craft and your experience.

Your mind and spirit need to disengage.
You’re in the midst of revision on a project you feel passionate about. Time passes unnoticed. You are in your story more than out of it. You think about it all of the time. You push on, keep going. Just stop for a moment. Your mind and spirit need a break. The more engaged you are in revision, the more likely that you’re dealing with characters and scenes that are emotionally trying. To the characters, and to you. These emotions may have little or nothing to do with your non-writing life though. You need space to process them. (If you’re not feeling your character’s emotions, you need to dig deeper, because if you can’t feel them, your reader/viewer won’t either.) Let your character’s emotions flow in and through you, but make sure you let them flow away and out of you as well.

Be patiently persistent.
Take the attitude that you will never give up. If what you’re writing means something to you, then set it in your heart that you will do whatever it takes to nurture it, protect it, support it and carry it into the world. Set it in your heart, too, that the process of writing is the real life of a writer. It’s not the film made, the book published. It’s the act of writing. That’s where your successes arise, that’s where you feel the joy. That’s where you are a writer.

But over time, as I learned to create a life I love, I forgot. I got used to the assumption that the constant pace of life, like the internet, would always be, well, up. Live. Moving. Achieving. Climbing. While I remembered the tides during times of pregnancy; for the most part, life became (and is) a steady cycle of achieving a goal, dreaming bigger, realizing it, dreaming bigger, in an ever-evolving state of expansion. I love the challenges each goal presents, I love the thrill of uncertainty, I love the risks, the stretch, the burn. It’s all good.

But what I’ve realized lately, is that this constant “always on” pattern denies the pattern of the natural world. It ignores the tides. It tries to convince us that the tides are a mistake, that they’re unnatural. That we’re doing something wrong when we experience them. Yes, we think there’s something wrong when the tide goes out. When we go through dry spells. When our finances dip. When we can’t see five years ahead. When we don’t know what we’re going to do next.

Where did we get the idea that we’re an exception to nature, rather than the rule? We understand the tides of awake/sleep, hunger/nourishment, day/night, winter/summer – we believe these are normal, positive aspects of life. Why do we then not see that the low tides in life – the drought, the uncertainty, the periods of less income, the in-between times, the creative blindness, the waiting times — are just as natural, positive and normal to our experience here?

What happens during times of drought? Trees push their roots down deeper. What happens during times of creative or economic drought? We push our roots down deeper  – not that we can force it, but that we grow. We stretch. We learn to trust our ability to endure, to survive, that life is germinating in the unseen. We face our fears and learn to wield our power to choose between faith and fear.

But there is something else that the tides teach us. And that is how to be quiet. How to be still. How to be. Present. Here. To cherish our blessings. To see them, sometimes for the first time. Creative blocks, feeling stuck – sometimes they’re caused by fear. Sometimes they’re caused by the project not being ready to emerge yet. Sometimes they are simply a natural tide of creativity. A tide we are not meant to fight.

What’s hard to hold on to when you are in the midst of a low tide, is the fact that the tide will turn. It will come back in again. It always does. And it brings with it fresh insight, fresh energy, new possibilities.

What do you do when you feel stuck or blocked? Accept your place in nature. Let it go. Refuse to believe that there’s something wrong with you.

Trust.

Faith in yourself, faith in your dreams, faith in your guidance, faith in the unseen, faith that you are a being of Life, that your power is inherent, that you have the heart and soul and spirit to bless others and yourself. Faith that the challenges precede the growth, the hours of cultivation, care, nurturing are in themselves the reward, the achievement of a dream only the beginning of another, as you expand, expand, expand into remembering your beauty, your power, your place – so rooted here for the moment, so blessed for infinity.

Your dream – what you want in your life – matters. It’s tied in a million intricate ways to the rest of us. Your blessing is our blessing. Your joy is our joy. The vision you have opens our eyes. You remind us of where we came from, why we’re here.

Your dream – what you want in your life – is yours. No one can give it to you, no one can make it happen, no one can take it away. It’s yours.

So choose life, choose your dream, choose to say yes and live it.

What amazes me is that so few writing books stem from the premise that so many writers actually experience: we don’t make up our stories, our stories exist and emerge as themselves.

How many writers have felt that the story “comes alive, with a life of its own” and that “the characters seem to know what they want to say and do”, and that “writing is more like channeling”, etc. , etc. You’ve felt it, right? I certainly do. The idea that my brain has concocted the characters, their personalities, their backstories, their emotional fabric, their pain, their reactions to decisions I don’t even know they’re going to make yet, feels completely foreign to my experience and how I receive stories. Perhaps because the concept of “making something up” involves a conscious decision, i.e., “John’s eyes will be blue, not brown; he’ll be afraid of heights and have a fiery temper.”

If I want to know what John looks like, what he’s afraid of and how he reacts, I have to ask him, listen and watch.

I’m not saying that writers don’t have choices to make and don’t alter details to serve the story. We do. What I am saying is that there is no way I could fabricate a story from scratch. Maybe I’m just not clever enough. My experience is that Stories and Characters present themselves to me, I get glimpses and hints here and there of what is going to happen. But mostly I’m working blind and don’t know what happens until my characters do. Which means the snags I face are not structure, tools and materials, but issues of relationships, trust, intention and communication.

Those aren’t in the books.

I have to spend time with the characters to hear what they have to say, what they’re afraid to say. It’s a journey we travel together. They lead, I follow. They speak, I listen, write it down. If something’s not working, or if there’s a better way to present the emotional fabric of their story, we work it out, try different things. We run into spots where we’re not sure what comes next.

The answers aren’t in the books.

They’re in the writing.

In other words, “results and clarity come from engagement (taking action), not thought.”

And not from endless searches through the next promising writing how-to book. I find the next scene by physically typing on the keyboard as the scene unfolds. I spend time discussing with the characters what the next scene will be, but I don’t always know. The answers sometimes elude me for days, until in some odd, unexpected moment, there it is. But more often than not, I have to go back to the keyboard and just type. Let the characters lead, get in deep water, see how they get themselves out. It’s an organic process. It’s not in the books.

But what about outlining? Treatments? Plotting before you write? Doesn’t a story need to be planned ahead of time so you know where you’re going? You wouldn’t build a house without a blueprint, after all.

Mmm. All good points.

What is the purpose of a house? To have a structurally sound protective environment that remains in place and supports a human lifestyle, right?

What is the purpose of a story? To move the human heart to respond, to open, to feel something.

There is a place for craft and knowing how to use the tools of your trade.

But a writer is more an architect than a carpenter.

And where do architects get their ideas? From listening to the needs and desires of the one who will live in the house. Who lives in the houses of our Stories? (If you said, audience – you’re incorrect.)

Characters live in the houses of our stories.

If you want to be a carpenter-writer, then you’ll end up with a house that some other architect designed and has built before. If you want to be an architect-writer, then you’ll understand why the most important quality to have is the ability to listen deeply into the Storyworld and trust what one hears, feels and intuitively knows. You’ll design and build from there.

You’ll translate stories that pierce the human heart and move us.

Pick Your Clients
I’m choosy. I know what type of clients I want to work with – and those are clients who value people and improve, inspire or add value to people’s lives. The type of industry those clients are in doesn’t matter to me. I have selectively approached potential clients and have been fortunate enough to choose who I work with. I have also seen the Universe pick ideal clients for me. One of my longest standing clients called me up out of the blue one summer afternoon. We’ve been together for six years. Why does this matter? It creates a synergy in my worklife that allows work to naturally assimilate with my life and who I am. I work with clients that I feel good about and we get along well with each other. It makes sense that as individuals we are suited to certain fields of interest, industries or types of clients. Choosing rather than accepting anyone who comes your way, leads to happier, more satisfying work.

Go Where the Money Is
This is the most important advice I was ever given. It came from one of the most successful American Indian entrepreneurs in the U.S. who founded a multi-million dollar security firm for the Department of Defense. He started as an electrician on a reservation in northern Minnesota. He dreamed of having his own business. He took a risk and opened his own company. He said even when things were tight, as long as he was working for himself, there was the chance that the phone would ring and something wonderful could happen. He knew if  he hadn’t taken that chance, the phone would never have been able to ring. He saw potential, he climbed above the expectations others had and he learned that going where the money is just makes sound business sense. Go where the money is. Go to companies who have the resources to pay you you charge. Don’t waste your time on companies who promise much, expect a ton and pay little. This is why I will not work for start-ups, non-profits or anyone who doesn’t already understand the value a copywriter brings to their business. I’m not going to spend my time convincing someone why they need me. If they don’t have the business maturity to already know that, they’re not the right client for me.

They Will Pay You What You Decide You’re Worth
Many freelancers struggle financially because they charge very little, they scrape by and never set their sites higher than a minimal wage income. You can be one of these people, or you can decide to be someone who charges a lot more and gets paid higher rates because you decide that you’re worth it. Go to salary.com and check out what the average salaries are for your type of job in the places your prospective clients operate. Set your standards higher. Go where the money is. You don’t need the headache of working for clients who have tight-purse strings, who don’t understand what it is that you do, or who want you to work your ass off for little or nothing. There are plenty of these type of clients around. There’s also plenty of clients who know your value and are more than willing to budget for it. But here’s the main point: you decide who you’re going to work for. You decide how much money you can make doing what you do.

Provide Value through Great Relationships, Not Just Performance
How you do business is more important than what you do in business. Offer more. Always be generous. Set up expectations of what you will do and for how much, but be there in a pinch when your client needs you, too. Remember, choose faith over fear. This means being confident enough to know that the Universe will support you and confident enough in your own value, to have the capacity to be generous. People work with people more than once because they like how it feels to work with them. Skills are important, but skill sets can be replaced. It’s how easy you are to work with, the value you give, how you make your client’s life better and easier, and the quality of your work that keeps them engaged with you.

Remember Why You Freelance
For me, it’s freedom to control my lifestyle and be home with my kids. My husband is also home with us, so we are together as a family full-time. We like it that way. I work Monday – Thursdays, normal business hours. I’ve found a three-day break is ideal for sustaining a creative profession. We also home educate, adapting that schedule around my work and days off. We spend part of the year in Minnesota and part of the year in Sarajevo. I’ve read that just because you’re working from home doesn’t mean that you are with your kids. I disagree. I’m physically present, interruptible and it’s my and my husband’s energy (and not a daycare provider’s) that they are absorbing and growing up with. They are learning what it is to commit to your dreams, to create your life with your thoughts, that they have the power to create money, and are growing up with an alternative to conventional living. They are the remote workers of the future, the agile, adaptable, trans-global innovators, equipped with the technology and the freedom to value their creativity, to think for themselves and possess the power to do work they love. It’s this I remember when things change, when finances aren’t as steady as a regular paycheck, when I’m tempted to wonder if the courage and resilience of depending solely on oneself to create your world is worth it. It is worth it. It’s priceless.

I think what you’re asking is really an issue of creative integrity. I’m not sure anyone starts out to put work out there that isn’t their best, but it happens. Some people are willing to sacrifice quality for success. Basically, selling themselves and their potential out for a quick return. Some people just don’t care. A lot of it comes down to maturity, motivation and professionalism.

I’ve always been someone who won’t do something unless I know I can do it well. That can trip me up sometimes, but for the most part, you’re not going to see my work until I feel pretty confident it represents the best of me at that time. You’re going to get quality and you’re going to get a professional who respects you as a human being. We live in an age of instantaneous results. The expectations that creates makes it hard to give yourself and your work the time, focus and protection you need to truly become something that stands out. Going to market too soon may pay off in early returns, but it will cost you in the long run because you’ll never know what you could have achieved if you’d given it more.

There’s another element involved, too, and that is respect for others’ time and talents. I’m not going to bring to market a product unless I know it meets high standards in my field. That isn’t arrogance, but understanding that doing something well is how you give and receive respect. When you respect someone, you honor them as a human being regardless of their position. And really, all of life comes down to how we relate to one another, so how you relate to others IS what life is all about and all of our creative work is really just play. It’s more important to me that you feel cared for as a human being than it is what you can potentially do for or with me on a project.

I read an article the other day by a screenwriter who said he always has a script or two in his car so if he sees Ben Affleck in the parking lot, he’ll have something to give him. Really? I think that’s terribly obnoxious. Is it possible that Mr. Affleck would accept a script that way? Maybe. Is that how you want to be known for doing business? Not me. (Would you want to be approached during your non-working time by a stranger trying to sell you something or get you to do her a career favor?) There’s a big difference between ‘taking advantage of an opportunity’ and having the self-respect to trust that how you do business is ultimately more important to your career than any one project.

You respect people’s time, talent and investment when you deliver your best – and you don’t waste their time with something that’s not ready yet. It really is a matter of setting high expectations for yourself and your work – and letting those expectations lift you and the work higher. You have to have the humility and discernment to take guidance from those you trust and the self-confidence to trust yourself when it counts. But at the end of the day, if you know you’ve put everything you’ve got into the work and you’ve delivered your best, well, that is the reward, isn’t it?

Q: But you talk about being bold? It sounds as if you’re after perfection, isn’t that risky?

Excellent point. I do talk about being bold. Because in my experience, I’ve always made decisions based on what I knew to be true for me – even when others couldn’t see the logic or reasoning. (For instance, I knew in my heart from the time I was 17 that I was meant to go to Bosnia – and for six years of turbulent life circumstances that calling simply wouldn’t let me go, no matter how many well-intended people tried to talk me out of it. I couldn’t explain why I felt called to travel there or why I felt attached to a people I’d never met – but I knew it was what I was meant to do and it proved that the calling was right.) I make decisions with my heart and intuition, and disregard the opinions of those who can’t see beyond the potential risks (which for some reason have never seemed that risky to me). So, be bold? Yes. Have the faith in yourself to make connections and act as a professional with those in your field you respect? Yes. Be willing to say yes to yourself and your dreams? Yes.

Perfection? No. Doing something well involves trust. Perfection never trusts. Perfection is built on doubt. Doing something well means listening to your inner voice when it tells you you’ve done everything you can and now you must let go and move on. Perfection will never get you to the point of letting go and moving on. Doing something well means you have the humility to know you will continue to grow – as well as you have done now, you will eventually do even better. Perfection has no room for that. It’s not built on wanting to deliver quality (though it appears that way) – but on fear of not being accepted. Never build anything on fear or doubt.

Q: Is it really a matter of being passionate about what you do?

Oh, passion, passion. Hmm. Passion has such a strong connotation of unwavering high-energy to it, doesn’t it? I hear ‘passion’ and already see the burn-out. But, maybe that’s just me. If you were to ask me if I’m passionate about writing, I would probably say no. If you ask me if I’m passionate about using writing to inspire and nurture the human spirit, I would say yes. I’m not trying to be coy. It’s just that for me, motivation and purpose are my driving factors. Passion feels too fragile to be the anchor that will hold for all the ups and downs and getting thrown off and having to be the one to dust yourself off and convince yourself to get up again and keep at it. I think passion is good when it means “enduring love for what you are doing” – but if it means “always feeling the high” then it fails miserably.

I should add that high quality in our day and age is something that will set you apart. You do something well and you’ll already be at an advantage. You show the dedication to master your craft, trust yourself, display self-confidence built on humility, and a conviction in your dream and you have already elevated yourself above the crowd. People respect courage, they respect those willing to take a chance on their dreams, they respect those who aren’t scared that they’ll miss their chance and trust that they have the power to create their lives  – but only when you bring respect, integrity and are someone who is genuinely good-natured and pleasant to work with. You have to respect yourself if you want anyone else to respect you – and that means having some principles. Old-fashioned? Maybe.

But greatness is built on that.

Hurley speaks to a spiritual community, but her words are no less true for writers and artists. In fact, they are more relevant than ever. So much of our art world is entrenched in copying what is proven to be financially successful that we risk losing the ability to offer something original. We get caught up in playing it safe. While this may work financially, it’s caustic to creativity. The very nature of creativity is to bring forth what hasn’t emerged yet. We see a wonderful freedom to explore new worlds in the frontier of technology – because it is new and the potential unknown. But there is just as great a potential for originality in the traditional arts as in technology. If we can get out from under the fear and weight of all that has come before us.

If you are in charge of your creative work, you own the process of how you create it. You are the only one, in fact, who can decide what that creative piece will be. There will come a point after you have gathered the sound advice of professionals you trust, when you will need to set aside all of their voices and go back into the work alone. Just you and the work. No one else’s opinions, directions, no consideration of who will approve or disapprove, of what your critics will think. No thought of awards or returns. Just you and the work.

From there, write the story you need to write. The one that trusts you more than any other writer to write it. The one that chose you. Trust yourself more than anyone else to take the risk of delivering something original.

Strip away the illusion that the work must “out-do” everything that’s been done before and go back to a very simple, very still point of being.

A place where there is no audience other than you. Where all it will ever be is what it becomes in your hands.

Where you allow it to be as beautiful and wild and deep as it wants to be.

Hurley says: “Listen to the voice that rises up through the earth and travels through you like light. Listen to the whisper of your very soul. Listen with your ear to the ground. There is a story that belongs to you. There is a song that is yours to sing.”

Sing. Sing as if no one will ever hear you.

And then, they will.

I became a writer to give people a voice. That’s still my purpose, though inspiring and nurturing the human spirit is equally important to me now. While the roots of writing trace back into my childhood, the need to make a difference goes even further. Writing, to me, has always served a utilitarian purpose. I’ve never been a writer’s writer, never been in love with the so-called glamour of the writing life. Never written just for the sake of writing. I’m not even that good of a writer. What I hope to be, though, is good at communicating to the human spirit.

Because that’s what matters to me. That’s my calling.

But the question, “does creative work need a purpose to be worth it” is an intriguing one. And I’m inclined to say, yes, it does. Why? Because creative work is not for the faint of heart. It’s not for those seeking fame, fortune or ease. (Though success can provide all three, it’s still never about that.) No, creative work is generative work. It’s a delicate balance between seeing into new worlds and leading others into those worlds. And keeping your sanity and your balance in between. It’s heart-work and soul-work and that type of work means that you hold a responsibility toward humanity far beyond what you imagine.

No, it’s not life and death work – at least not to the world at large. But it is often life and death work for the human spirit. Because we deal in spiritual realms. Disagree? Where does your creative work come from? It’s not you. You’re a channel. A conduit. And when you’re most deeply engaged in the creative process, you’re in another realm. You can feel that, right? Time ceases to exist. Energy flows. Something is at work, leading you. And it’s glorious and thrilling and beautiful.

It’s also the easy part.

Then comes the deep work. The re-tilling, the toiling, the weeding, the watering, the praying for sun to shine  instead of rain, and rain to fall instead of sun, the covering from frost (no I’m not talking about gardening), the showing to master gardeners who sometimes think it should be like their work and all the work that has come before it, because, well, what to do with something new that doesn’t look familiar…and being present, being present, being present to it and to yourself so neither you nor the work withers away. It’s a form of spiritual wrestling that engages the deepest parts of your being, and forces you to grow stronger or die. You need a solid bedrock of purpose to stay rooted and withstand the spiritual forces of the work. I’m not saying your purpose needs to be altruistic, but I am saying it better be something that means something to you. Because it will take every once of strength, trust and constant decision-making between fear and faith to keep yourself convinced it’s worth it.

Very few are called to be creators. Most people are consumers, critiques and fosterers of status quo. They embrace new creations when they are handed to them conveniently and have no idea of the amount of spiritual and psychic energy that went forth into the creating of it. (Something we should be mindful of as technology hands us new gadgets, right? People make those.) It all comes from within. And to stand up to the challenges of being that channel requires that we are utterly convicted of our purpose and that our purpose matters.

How do you find your purpose?

You look within. You ponder what matters to you. What disturbs you. What you want to see more of in the world. (Always fight for something, not against.) You pray to your spirit and you listen for answers. And you remember that purpose doesn’t have to be an “answer.” It can be a “question.”