about me and my work
Naomi Rose, Book Developer & Creative Midwife
Encouraging your flowering
Naomi Rose, creator of Writing from the Deeper Self / Book Developer & Creative MidwifeI help people write books that reflect their true nature.
I help them locate and develop their genuine creative ways.
Self-trust and periodic joy follow seamlessly.
This is the fruit of my life’s work — and I love it.
For more than thirty years (a lifetime, if you count my childhood influences), I have lived in the world of books — first as a writer and editor, and for many years now as a Book Developer and Creative Midwife. What began as a craft became a calling: helping people bring forth the book that is waiting in them, in a way that stays true to who they really are.
I come to this work as an artist in three forms — writing, visual art, and music — and as someone whose life is grounded in a contemplative, spiritual path. All of that lives in the way I listen, and in what I can help you hear in yourself.
My approach honors both the craft of writing and the spiritual journey of creating — turning what might feel like an overwhelming task into a profound labor of love.
“Naomi has the innate ability to coax out, in the most gentle and supportive way, that which wants to grow. She assists in unearthing buried creative seeds and nurtures growth so that a living, thriving form emerges — a tangible idea, a new business direction, a workable book outline, a written piece, or a new creative work. Her non-linear approach to creating births tangible outcomes. With Naomi as my ‘creative developer,’ I feel well cared-for and well heard — and inspired to bring my many gifts and products into the world.”
— Dana Watt, Chaplain; author-in-progress, Offer It Up
“You kept me coming back to what’s most meaningful about what I’m trying to do and have done. You ask deep questions. You’re with me in that depth and heart and spirit, because that’s right where you are. You stuck with it. You listened. You obviously care. I think you are a midwife and therapist. This opened, aligned, and expanded my thinking about who I am and how I express myself with my art.”
— Lisa Carey, author-in-progress, Finding Home
Naomi Rose, self-portrait
IN THE BEGINNING . . .
Since childhood, I have been fascinated by the creative process.
I remember staring at the vast blue sky (at least, the part that was visible between the tall buildings in New York City, where I was born), watching the golden sunlight illuminate everything around me—as if it all, myself included, were a miracle from someplace beyond what I could see.
"What makes life exist?” I wondered in full innocence. “How does something come out of nothing?"
But over time, that question—and that essentially mystical orientation — dipped out of my awareness under the press of living a worldly human life, finally reemerging many decades later when I became a Sufi in the lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan.
Then, all those childhood glimpses and wonderings found coherence, ballast, and guidance.
this may be the most essential thing about me.
This spiritual foundation (though I didn’t know to call it that, as a child) is the heart of my work helping people write the book of their own heart.
When I work with clients, my underlying belief is that in them is the “Hidden Treasure” that seeks to know itself. That they too are called to receive and bring forth “something” out of “nothing,” whatever the book’s subject, genre, or reason for being. That an initial idea alights in them and seeks to grow into a completed work — a process that transforms them along the way. This is what makes the journey of writing a book so profound and satisfying.
As one client expressed to me, after completing her book, about its origin:
"There was a deep knowing that there was so much I needed to express, and that urgency was called a book. [After a while] it went from inchoate to 'This is absolutely possible. I'm going to do it!'" –Jenaii Gold, PhD, MFT, author: The Moon, the Hare, and the Pearl: An Intuitive Guide to the Therapist-Client Relationship
THE WORLD I GREW UP IN
WAS FILLED WITH WRITING
Books have been with me all my life, from inside out.
I grew up in a highly literary family. Both my parents were writers — my father wrote lyrical scripts for radio plays during the "Golden Age of Radio" in 1940s and '50s New York; my mother wrote passionate short stories. They were the two creative souls in a family of accountants and social workers and other nuts-and-bolts professions — sensitive artists for whom the creative life was everything. And that was their gift to me. Because of them, my early childhood held real magic: my father's bedtime stories, the puppets he made before my eyes, the wonderful records my parents outfitted me with; my mother's passion for story. I took in the essence of writing long before my intellect had any ideas about it.
From the outside, it looked like the perfect background for a writer — certainly, my friends, in adolescence, envied it. But living inside it was more complicated. There was a great deal of brilliant talk — and very little listening. It’s a requirement of the soul, for a person to grow into themselves without artifice or interference, to be listened to, reflected well; that helps form an identity based on truth and caring, and forms the streambed for the flow of one’s life. In my case, who I actually was, and my own particular gifts, went largely unremarked on, unreflected. And when they were noticed, they often reflected my parents' own unlived dreams, rather than mine.
Drip by drip, this wore down my confidence in my creative gifts. I held them back, even as I was pushed, sometimes even drawn, towards them. In those days, I would have traded all of it for even a semblance of a 1950s TV happy family—“Father Knows Best,” or “The Donna Reed Show.” Who cared if I could draw a landscape or write a story, when my sense of self was fast disappearing into the surrounding chaos? (One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons shows a glum young college student writing home: “Dear Mom and Dad,” she complains, “thanks a lot for my happy childhood. Now I'll never be a writer.")
So although I was good with words, and although my parents assumed that I would follow in the family pattern and become a writer too, writing did not actually bring me closer to myself. I had been positioned towards intellectual sophistication rather than authenticity (I didn’t even really know what my being authentic would have looked like), and so I didn’t know how to translate the wordless, feeling places in me into words — or even give them their due attention.
And in my family (as in so many creative myths acted out), creativity was often experienced as struggle. Not the good-workout kind of struggle, where you surpass what you were previously capable of and maybe lose a bit of sleep over it — where you say, “That’s not quite it,” and return to it again and again until finally it is what it has in it to be. No, this kind of struggle was self-defeating, self-undermining — and often outwardly explosive. Not knowing how to navigate the creative life, not knowing how to balance the otherworldliness of inspiration with the necessary gravitational field of this world created many an unhappy time. The finished work might be beautiful, but the making of it was frequently a torment.
Without knowing it, I absorbed the old story that to be creative is to suffer. And at some point, I turned my back on this scenario and said, “Not me. If creating means this kind of destructive suffering, I’ll do something else instead.”
It would take me many years to understand that what could have transformed the creative impulse into life-enhancing expression was a human requisite for everyone — to be deeply cared for and listened to; to be reflected accurately, so you know who you are; to be met in your being and encouraged in your real gifts, whatever they show up as. Then, creating would not be a source of pain, but its opposite — a source of profound self-discovery, and an elevator to God.
This is not to say creating is totally without difficulty. The constructed self always resists being humbled by the truer one beneath it — that ache is real. But it is the ache of surrender, not the relational torment I had fled. And it can be part of the joy, rather than working against it — because to get to the truth of one’s being is a beautiful blessing, worth the toll.
It would take me many years to understand that these were the very things that I would one day offer to others. I had to find them by tunneling below my conditioning, by reaching up and inward for the divine qualities that live in each of us. In that sense, I came to this work in the spirit of the “Wounded Healer” archetype: what I now am able to give others is the very thing I once suffered from the absence of, and most needed to receive.
My parents have been gone more than half a century, now, and my healing path over the years has given me compassion for them, and gratitude. They handed down a love of beautiful language and its infinite capacities . . . and an ache that sent me searching for a way to recover, delight in, cultivate, and own my artistic gifts.
MY JOURNEY TO
A HEART- and SOUL-CENTERED APPROACH TO
BOOK DEVELOPMENT
After graduate school, I embarked on what became a decades-long career in the publications field — as a writer, editor, and consultant. I fell into editing while still in graduate school: a position came open in one of the departments, I tried out for it, and got it — knowing very little about what the work entailed. The outgoing editor welcomed me with a thick copy of The Chicago Manual of Style and a bottle of beer, said “Good luck,” and walked out the door. He was free; I was baffled. That was my introduction to the work I would do for decades.
With a great deal of practice, I developed keen editing skills — a discernment that could turn many a “sow's ear” of a manuscript into something close to a silk purse. (In time I was listed in Who's Who and twice named “Best Editor in the San Francisco Bay Area.”) I freelanced for publishers around the country, helping authors sound good on the page.
And yet something was missing. What was the real value of being sophisticated with words — of helping authors sound polished by some outer standard of “good writing”? What about the child who had looked up into the blue sky and seen the sunlight radiating through the air? Who was the one who'd had that vision — and how could I get her back? Not for the first time, I asked myself: Isn't there more than this?
There had to be more than the glossy presentation that was the industry standard: Here's the formula, do a good job with it, help us sell books by the millions. But what if, instead, what came forth onto the page was the secret treasure hidden within the author? (For God is said to have said, "I was a Hidden Treasure and I longed to be known, so I created humanity that I might be known.") What if books that revealed the writer's hidden treasure could help readers touch their own? Wouldn't that change everything?
That midlife calling — Is that all there is? Aren't we here for something more? — turned out to be a call from a deeper realm. It revived in me a longing to understand myself and humanity more truly, so I could live the life that was actually mine. I went back to graduate school, this time to study transpersonal psychology — which would lead me, in time, to a whole new way of working with people seeking to write a book.
Transpersonal psychology takes in both the individual ego-self and the larger being that holds us all. Where traditional ego psychology begins with infancy and proceeds as though that were the very beginning, transpersonal psychology also makes room for the soul — that ever-present essential being beneath our usual sense of who we are, the one that whispers to us in unguarded moments. So alongside what I learned about attachment — how a child who is well met by a loving adult is set on a different course than one who is not — I also learned about the soul in each of us, and how it longs to have a living place in our lives.
Good attachment sets a person's life on course in harmony with their own being. (And if it doesn’t happen early on, it can happen later.)
the emergence of the “hidden treasure”
It was through this lens of healthy attachment that I finally understood what had been missing in my own relationship with writing — and what I had been longing for all along: to be truly listened to and known, so that I could know, trust, love, and faithfully express myself.
I didn't need more how-to's about writing. I needed to be listened to, so that I could listen to myself. I came to see that an experiential level has to come first — that a certain inner safety is what frees true expression — and that I had never needed to remake myself to reach the beauty and illumination I craved. What I'd been missing was never technique: it was to be met. There was a place inside me — a “hidden treasure” — that no one had known to notice, and so it had stayed hidden even from me.
How did that Hidden Treasure begin to become known? Often, it begins when someone else sees it before you can. Even early on, there had been a grace note — a sixth-grade teacher who assigned writing a novel to everyone in his class. When he read mine, he looked directly into my eyes, and told me, “You are a wonderful writer!” And, acting on his conviction, he recommended me for the Special Progress class in junior high school the following year. I have never forgotten it — to be truly seen, even once, can last a lifetime. These many decades later, I am still suffused with gratitude.
But the deeper opening came through my Sufi path, which I found (or it found me) later in life. At its beating heart, it is an intimate relationship with the Divine — experiential, personal, sensed and felt rather than looked to abstractly. In the ongoing process of seeking the Beloved within myself, I began to receive the very attachment I had longed for early on: to be met, listened to, guided, and held in my essential being. Now I could begin to listen to, trust, and love myself — and know where to turn for inspiration and guidance.
This is what would come to shape my healing work, both with authors and with myself. Learning to listen to myself made it possible for me to listen to others who longed to be known — in their case, through writing write a book. Listening deeply and well, it turned out, is a form of loving. It opens the inner door for the deeper Self to become felt and known.
This is the “Creative Midwifery” work I do as a Book Developer. I seek to bring about a good attachment between the author and their inner being in relation to the book of their heart. Being deeply listened to allows a positive attachment to form at a deeper level — and what takes root there finds its way onto the page naturally.
It makes a world of difference — for the writer, for the book, and for the reader — to see yourself truly reflected on the page.
Ripening & Blooming, and New Life
All of this — the listening, the healing, the return to the deeper Self — is something I offer to others based on what I have been living in my own creative life. This season of my life feels like one of Ripening & Blooming, and New Life: gifts that went underground in me for a long time have found their way back, deepened into great gratitude by the healing journey itself.
The Return of My Visual Artistry
As a child, I drew and painted with a pure, unself-conscious joy. But as I grew older and studied art (I went to a high school devoted to art and music), that intrinsic connection got buried under a tangled welter of comparisons and conditions, and the joy disappeared beneath its weight. For years at a time, I wouldn't draw or paint at all. And then the desire would surface again, calling “Remember me!” for a while, before sinking back down — its way of telling me it was still there, still wanting to come through me, and would return whenever I was ready. At last, I have become far more ready. (Almost all the illustrations on this website are mine, not counting Mary Cassatt, Winslow Homer, etc.)
The Return of My Musical Artistry
My relationship with music was more complicated. To sing is to give your heart a voice — and when my heart went underground early in life, my voice went with it. But since, for me, the singing voice is directly connected to the soul, again and again mine tried to return. I worked at healing this very deep wound for decades, on many levels — voice lessons, singing in semi-professional choruses — until finally, my voice could come forth freely, and I could offer its beauty as a gift from my soul rather than an unwanted sense of exposure. Now, I sing in my videos and teachings as a way to offer an atmosphere of deep attunement, as well as while washing the dishes and driving the car, and for friends. It is part of my being, and a way of being with my heart. (As it always was — but now it is safe, and mine to give.)
Music has always been central to my Sufi path: its founder, Hazrat Inayat Khan, was a renowned musician who gave up playing the instrument he loved in order to "tune souls." So there is a spiritual wholeness to my singing now, and a deeper context for it than merely sounding good.
What I know about creating from the inside, then, is not only how a gift can be buried under what gets laid on top of it, but also how patiently it waits — and how it can come back. This is part of what I bring to my clients: not as a teacher who has it all figured out, but as a companion, a knowledgeable friend who knows the territory of losing and recovering one's own creative voice — and who trusts that yours is still there, ready to be coaxed into full-throated “song” on the page.
MY PROFESSIONAL, SPIRITUAL, & ARTISTIC GIFTS
ARE AT YOUR SERVICE
I bring to my work with clients a richly textured background, drawn from both intuitively and intentionally:
~ PROFESSIONAL & EDUCATIONAL ~
My 30-plus years in the publications field — as a book developer, writer, editor, and consultant — together with my training in the subtle art of Sufi healing (below) lets me offer you support that is uniquely right for you: helping you craft writing that is not only structurally sound and compelling, but also connected to the deeper dimensions of human experience that readers can recognize and feel grateful for.
~ ARTISTIC ~
The visual art and the singing I mentioned above are not only for me—they also support the work I do with you:
My visual-art sensibility helps you evoke vivid images and impressions in your writing.
My musical ear helps you find rhythm and tone in your breath and nervous system — quieting the self-critical mind and allowing a more musical cadence to show up on the page.
My own developmental journey as a writer helps me recognize your unique creative capacities so you can draw them forth from the “Nothing” (the infinite potentiality) into the “Something” (the reality of your written book).
~ HEALING ~
As an ordained Healing Conductor in the Sufi lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan, I approach book development as a healing art in its own right. As I listen to you deeply, you connect with your own heart and inner knowing. And hearing yourself reflected back with clear-eyed, compassionate understanding allows your Hidden Treasure to flow naturally onto the page, opening you to your intrinsic wholeness.
A noted musician in his native India, Inayat Khan wrote:
“I arrived at a stage where I touched the Music of the Spheres. Then every soul became for me a musical note, and all life became music . . . . Now, if I do anything, it is to tune souls instead of instruments; to harmonize people instead of notes. . . . I have found in every word a certain musical value, a melody in every thought, harmony in every feeling; and I have tried to interpret the same thing, with clear and simple words, to those who used to listen to my music.
“I played the vina until my heart turned into this very instrument; then I offered this instrument to the divine Musician, the only musician existing. Since then I have become His flute; and when He chooses, He plays His music.”
Hazrat Inayat Khan, author, The Mysticism of Music, Sound, and Word
LISTENING YOUR WRITING ONTO THE PAGE
As your Book Developer and Creative Midwife, I help bring forth the book that is already alive in you. Rather than handing you a formula, or fixing on market considerations, I listen — deeply and attentively — for the contours of who you are, what matters to you, and the creativity that is yours alone. That becomes the foundation of your writing — the very thing most approaches skip over in their rush to technique and structure. And as you find your own natural creative ways, what has been waiting in you finds its full expression.
As my esteemed client, author Shoshana Fershtman, said of her experience working with me:
"Naomi has been a precious guide. . . . She has gently 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." — Shoshana Fershtman, JD, PhD, Author, The Mystical Exodus in Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma and the Wellsprings of Renewal (Routledge)
Creating can be a profound joy rather than a torment when you are truly listened to and met — not only by me (though very much by me) but, more crucially, by yourself. That is my joy, and what I am here to make possible for you.
If what I've shared calls you toward a conversation about your book — whatever stage it's in —
I invite you to join me for a free 30-minute Discovery Call.
We'll listen to you together, see what you're wanting, and hear what wants to be known.
Then your writing will have a way to flow freely into the world.
I’m glad to have shared something of myself with you,.
In conversation, we can find out about you
and the book waiting to be known in and through you.
Because it’s not just how many pages you write. It’s how much of you comes onto the page.