When you even think about hiring someone to help you do something as vulnerable and perhaps unknown as writing a book,

you want to know who they are, what qualifies them to help you, whether you’ll be in good hands, and whether they can truly help you to fulfill your deepest goals.

That’s what I would want if the situation were reversed.

It’s what I did want, many years ago — and didn’t find. I found people who had expertise with books. And I found compassionate people who could help me listen myself into more clarity. But I never found a person who could do both. So I had to become that person.

Now I do this. I hold my clients in my heart, listen to them well, and bring my 30+ years’ professional experience in the publications field in service of the books they want to write, but aren’t initially sure how to. At least, not in a way that resonates with their souls, reflects them authentically on the page, and offers something wonderful to their readers.

So that’s what I can offer you: a way to write a book that resonates with your soul, reflects you authentically on the page, and offers something truly wonderful (helpful, meaningful, beautiful) to your grateful readers.

"When I began this process [of writing a book], my deepest yearnings were twofold: one, that the words expressed would be a true expression of my soul; and two, that in the process of writing I would find and deepen my relationship with my creativity, and myself. Naomi has been a precious guide in both respects. She has provided unwavering support and profound mirroring, and has gently guided and encouraged me, again and again, to write from the place of my true and authentic self.

“In the process, I have come into relationship with my deepest creative self, after a lifetime of longing and disconnection from it. Her intellectual capacity is also profound: she understands and helps me give voice to complex intellectual and conceptual concepts, as well as deeply personal and spiritual ones. She is a truly gifted teacher and guide. Anyone who has the pleasure of working with her will encounter the joy of discovering many hidden gifts and treasures in their work and, perhaps more importantly, in themselves." — Shoshana Fershtman, JD, PhD. Author, The Mystical Exodus in Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma and the Wellsprings of Renewal

Foundations of My Ability to Help You Write the Book of Your Heart (and Feel Cherished by Us Both)

# 1: My Expertise with Books

I’ve spent 30+ years in the publications field,

so I know how to guide both “budding” and experienced authors in writing the books of their heart. I’ve worked with publishers as well as authors. I’ve served as a writer, editor, consultant, illustrator, Book Developer, Creative Midwife, and self-publishing coordinator, so I know the nuts-&-bolts of the book industry. I can take you from “spark to finish,” starting with the mere whisper of a book idea all the way through to a publishable manuscript (and even beyond there into print, ebook, and even audiobook, if you choose to self-publish).

I know a great deal about a book’s need for grammatical construction, logical development of ideas, headings, bridges between topics, the kinds of rhythmic repetitions that turn chaos into beautiful form, and other fundamentals of presenting writing in a professional yet highly readable way. You can count on me to make sure that your manuscript is fully dressed to go out into the world once it reaches that point, no shoelace left untied (as befits all the time, love, effort, etc. you poured into it).

I have won awards for my editorial and writing contributions. I’m listed in Who’s Who and Who’s Who of American Women. I won the Thumbtack Elite Award for “Best Editor in the San Francisco Bay Area” for two years in a row.

I’ve been acknowledged by experts in the field:

“I'm happy to acknowledge Naomi Rose's important influence on my writing life as I have others in the past: Julia Cameron, Natalie Goldberg, and Eric Maisel, to name a few. I've since come to regard (and treasure) her as a writing mentor.” — Chris Dunmire, Creative Director & Publisher of Creativity Portal — a “Writers Digest 101 best sites”

I’ve been interviewed as an expert:

• By podcaster Naomi Estment on the topic, “Midwife Your Message: How to Share the Music Inside You by Writing a Book”

• By podcaster Sharon Burton of “Spark Your Creative,” where I discussed “Creating through Covid-19”

• For “Where the Client Is,” where I spoke about the value of therapists writing books

• By Oakland Tribune reporter Dave Newhouse on my vision as a publisher.

I’ve published books on the creative process that both beginning and more experienced writers have found liberating and useful:

• Starting Your Book: A Guide to Navigating the Blank Page by Attending to What’s Inside You

• An Organic Approach to Structuring Your Book: An Alternative to Outlines (Workbook Included)

• 10 Essential Qualities That Help You Write a Book: Watering the Seeds of the Qualities You Need

So if you have never written a book before (and even if you have), I can guide you knowledgeably about writing a book.

# 2: Being Raised in a Family of Writers

I once studied with a 4th-generation entrepreneur who featured this fact on his “About” page. His great-grandmother had long ago operated a stocking factory.

Well, I was born into a writing family. My father wrote scripted stories for a New York City radio station when I was young, and my mother wrote short stories. My maternal grandfather wrote stories, too. So I was raised in an atmosphere of writing.

This meant both listening to stories (my father’s bedtime stories; records carefully chosen by my parents for their imaginative value) and reading stories. Even my parents’ bookshelves were an open book to me: I had access to any and all. No one would even have thought of stopping me from curling up with a book that was way beyond my level of comprehension.

This was, in many ways, a blessing. Too young to have developed a discriminating intellect, not yet able to follow the intricacies of the plot or meaning, at a time of life when my language still included the feel of colors, all this left me free to inhale the subtle feel of the stories: the scenery, landscapes, metaphors and vivid details that made the characters and their situations come to life. I may have missed the broad outlines, but I inhaled the subtleties into my being as if they were worlds I deeply knew. Living with these worlds helped form who I experienced myself as becoming.

So I know what opening to a book as a reader can do.

About becoming a writer — because writing was really the life-blood of my parents (they even had dinnertime discussions about literature and fictional characters as if these were people who lived up the street), they assumed that their children would naturally take up the “family business.” That is, I was expected to be a writer.

You might think this was heaven. Certainly, by the time I was in my teens, my friends did. “What, your parents are writers and want you to be a writer? Gee, I wish I had that kind of family!” But although I did show promise as a writer, there were at least two problems:

One, a person can’t be pushed into being a writer. It’s an inside job, requiring an inner motivation. You can’t do it just because others say you should. (That is, you could go through the motions, but the experience will be uninspired, and the writing likely will be too.)

And two, for writing to be meaningful, fruitful, and even healing to those reading it, it has to be that way for the person doing the writing. For this to take place, you need to have a sense of your authentic inner being, so you can tell things like “Yes, that’s getting close to what I really mean,” or “No, even though I wrote the words, I can’t connect with what’s behind them.” If you don’t become more known to yourself through your writing, then all you have is some impressive words on a page.

This is what can happen if you, yourself, haven’t been well listened to, heard, and reflected by the significant people in your life. And this was the case for me.

One of the painful difficulties of not being listened to and heard, early on, is that you don’t learn how to listen to and hear yourself well. When this kind of delight in your sheer being is not modeled — when the adults in your young life aren’t able to be with you, accompany you, and support your organic becoming — then you develop a skewed view of yourself. Rather than seeing yourself as precious, as a being with infinite potential who will want to develop in ways fitting your interests and needs guided by the GPS of your heart, you see yourself as you’ve been (mis)-seen by these important figures in your life. If they aren’t able to listen you closer to yourself, without some breakthrough awareness you won’t be able to do that for yourself (or anyone else), either.

So although I was expected to write, even pressured to write (yes, it can happen) — and although I grew to have a large vocabulary and a seemingly facile mind — very little of it was connected to what was inside me. And there was a sense of falseness in that. Even getting accolades for writing that doesn’t truly come from within the writer can feel false. And the weight, the burden, the strain, the sheer uncommented-on misery of living a life that doesn’t feel like one’s own cannot be underestimated. It’s an invisible wound, but a wound just the same.

So yes, I did write. I wrote papers in college and in graduate school. Later, when I became an editor in my twenties, I learned the ropes of what traditional publishers considered worth publishing. They had formulas and industry standards, and the manuscripts they accepted were filled with knowledge and, sometimes, cleverness. But as to whether I found my soul reflected and nourished (as I took out my blue pencil and marked up the manuscripts to read better and more accurately), I did not. And I saw this as the way of the world, how things had to be. That there was no room for my soul, here. For the soul.

Even when I started writing articles for magazines (living out the family expectation), I followed this ubiquitous but unspoken standard. “Five Ways to. . . ,” “The 10 Best. . . ,” “A Better Way to. . . ,” and so on. Assuming an expert status, I developed not only a byline but also a persona. And the more I got rewarded for writing like this (publication, payment, assignments), the more I thought this persona should do the trick, should make me feel important and valued and happy.

But despite the articles and contributions to anthologies and things of that nature, I didn’t feel important or valued or happy, inside. I felt like I was living someone else’s life. And where was my own to be found?

When my mid-life crisis arrived, although its urgency came as a shock, it didn’t actually come out of nowhere. The writing persona had felt for some time like a not-quite-true fit; and the accommodation to publishing conventions, bringing my increasingly adept editing abilities to making essentially soulless manuscripts read better, had left me with a hollow feeling. I could no longer sidestep the increasingly louder aching question: “Is this really all there is?”

It’s a question most of us have to encounter at some point in our lives, and mid-life is one of the times when it comes: “Isn’t my life supposed to be for something? Wasn’t there supposed to be more to me, in me, for me?”

I did not buy a red sports car, or opt for cosmetic surgery. Instead, I decided to go back to school in a whole other field.

Healing.

# 3: Learning Healing Ways

There was a New Yorker cartoon I once saw years ago that I loved. In it, a college girl is sitting in her dorm room, writing a letter home. “Dear Mom and Dad,” she writes, “thanks a lot for my happy childhood! Now I’ll never be a writer!” You can hear the sarcasm dripping from her pen.

I loved this cartoon because it was the opposite of my upbringing. Growing up in my family of writers, what I longed for all along was a happy family. I had no notion of what that could be like.

In returning to graduate school to study psychology (first clinical psychology, then transpersonal psychology), I hoped to get closer to understanding what could bring about the effects of a happy family inside you when you were already grown.

So I learned about the field of (unfortunately clinically titled) “Object Relations,” which concerned the mother-infant bond. I learned about narcissistic parenting, where parents whose own needs for “secure attachment” had gone hungry and so were parenting from a place of self-absorption that served no one. I learned about the need for bonding, and other ideals and fracturings of early bonding. I learned about the need for positive reinforcement and acceptance by authority figures early in life. I even learned something about the soul’s journey, and an archetype called the “Wounded Healer,” whose early deficits and pain created the very elixir that would bring healing later on.

I learned about the importance of creativity in the healing process, and how it could open up stuck places that an unhappy person had become resigned to. I learned about energy, and healing with energy, and even (though this never had been a topic at home) the power of words.

I had considered becoming a therapist. In one way, I was a natural: I liked to go deeper into things, and I had the kind of dysfunctional childhood that often produces therapists (motivating a searching for something else, as in “There has to be something more. . . .”). But it didn’t feel exactly right to set my life on course to do over 1,000 hours of internship prior to getting licensed. I wasn’t sure what I was to do next, but I was glad to have had this immersive orientation in healing the psyche and the spirit. Surely, it would be useful — in my own life, and more.

One day, I was walking down a path — literally walking down a dirt path, with no one else around — and an inner voice came to my notice. It was not one of those whispers that I’d started paying more attention to after starting to study healing ways. It was a shout!

“Writing from the Deeper Self,” it called loudly. “Writing from the Deeper Self!”

I felt dazed and confused. “What?” I asked. “What is that? What do you mean?”

“Writing from the Deeper Self, Writing from the Deeper Self!” the voice repeated.

It unnerved me, it was so loud and insistent. But it would not be brushed away.

And over time, I took it in. And it taught me what it was about, gradually, as it unfolded.

It gave me the work I do today.

My Credentials in Healing

In addition to these studies, I could say that my credentials in healing largely come from the journey of healing my own heart, allowing the greater Unifying energy to come through, and getting my small self out of the way.

A crucial resource and blessing on this healing journey has been my coming into the Sufi tradition of Hazrat Inayat Khan, being initiated as a mureed (one translation is “desirer”). Pir O Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan was, among other things, a master musician who brought Sufism to the West from India in the early 20th century, and left behind an impressive body of books that were originally lectures given to his disciples and others who were interested. Among the other areas of great wisdom in these books are writings on healing, including the breath, one’s thoughts, one’s balance, and much more.

Drawn irresistibly to these writings and the teachings that are still living from modern-day Sufi teachers, I sought my own healing there and found it, to an increasingly large degree. This is what’s behind my ability to listen so well. It is a subtler listening, and what is real in myself and in another person thereby becomes more known to us both.

There is also a Healing Order within this Inayatiyya, as it is called, and I am soon to become a Healing Conductor. Meanwhile, I make use of the spiritual practices designed for healing, and continue to learn more, for my own benefit, the benefit of my family, friends, and clients, and for the world.

# 4: Your Being in Good Hands

Before all this happened, I had the book-knowledge to help people write. But I didn’t yet have the understanding of what needs to be brought forth in the writer to make the writing one’s own.

That part is not a matter of words or book-learning. It’s a way to relate to the person so they feel seen and known. It’s about listening their deeper nature closer to the surface, so that what’s inherently in them can be what guides them. It’s about being in a field of love, creativity, and infinite potential together, so that what’s in them that is like that field is activated. Then the inspiration comes to them of their own accord, and a feel for what rings true is built in.

This is why I focus so much on the listening. Because when I listen to my clients in a way that helps them listen to themselves, what wants to be known from within them has an opening to make itself known.

This can take place in so many ways. In a relationship. In a creative act. And by writing a book.

People have sometimes asked me, “Why do you focus on helping people write books? Books are so much more work. Why not an essay, or a blog?”

Well, yes, I could do that. If a kindred client asked for my help with that, I would give it.

But the reason I focus on books is not only because I was a book editor for so long, and because I’ve written books, myself. No, it’s mainly because writing a book is a long-term relationship that allows you to go deeper. And, as with human long-term relationships, although there can be challenges, the blessings can outweigh the challenges. And the intimacy of this relationship gives you something that you may long have longed for, even without fully knowing it.

So this is how my career as a Book Developer & Creative Midwife came into being. It likely wouldn’t have arisen without my personal wounding around writing. I’ve found the “more” hoped for in the cry, “But isn’t there more?” It wouldn’t have arisen without my ability to write (for which I have my parents to thank — their passion for writing, their “writing genes,” their expectation that I could be a writer). It wouldn’t have arisen without my long apprenticeship in the field of editing and soulless publishing, so I could hone my skills and also say, “This isn’t the definitive horizon of what’s possible.”

And it wouldn’t have arisen without the existence of a pure, a divine place in us all that seeks to inspire us, guide us, and express through us, But arisen, it has.

And you can make use of it. You can engage me to help you listen forth the book of your heart.

Then, the book that you write will transform those people fortunate enough to read it. Your book can be healing to write, healing to read, and healing for the world.

“Naomi is gifted with the ability to create time and space for her writing students to feel our experiences welling up from our roots, their own unique tides coursing through our bodies, and to meld them with the words that name them. Together, we can swim in the language like fish, as naturally as we were always meant to. She is also a startlingly gifted writer, whose inspired and deeply satisfying writing provides sustenance to the soul. They are the fire, air, and water of communication. Naomi will cherish you, and your work, as you begin to recognize the beauty and poignancy of your own stories.” — Carolyn Francis

NOTE: “Book Developer & Creative Midwife” is my own terminology. I am a Book Coach in terms of guiding you knowledgeably through the book-writing process — but with the nuanced addition of a soulful, collaborative receptivity to your discovering, through our work together, how who you actually are wants to write. (The term, “development,” here, refers to how a photographic negative in a darkened room will evolve from pure blank opacity into a clear and detailed visibility.) There are no templates, no “shoulds” in my way of guiding you — just listening to you really well so you recognize your path from within in writing your book, and have the support, trust, and confidence to take it.

Sign up for my newsletter and discover the power of writing and healing. Let me support you in bringing the book of your heart to radiant life.

As a thank-you, I’ll send you a free copy of my book, 10 Essential Qualities That Help You Write a Book. As these qualities become known to you and surface, they will support you abundantly to write the book of your heart and live more authentically.

Thank you for reading what I have written, here. I look forward to reading what you will write.