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
and enable the development of their genuine writing voice —
a profound experience of book development.
As a Book Developer and Creative Midwife, I combine 30+ years of professional writing, editing, and consulting experience with deep listening skills to help you discover your genuine voice and vision. 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, author-in-progress; Chaplain; Spiritual Business Mentor
“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 of a book-in-progress, Fiber Artist (Quilted Journey Arts), environmental educator
Naomi Rose, self-portraitIN 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 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.
I mention this first
because it may be the most essential thing about me.
This spiritual foundation is the heart of my work helping people write the book of their heart through intuitive writing guidance.
When I work with clients, the invisible underlay is that they too are part of the great web of Being that seeks to know itself. Somewhere inside them, they too are called to receive and bring forth “something” out of “nothing.”
Whatever their book's subject, something "comes" to them to pursue from initial idea to completed work, transforming them in the process. This transformation is what makes the journey of writing so profound, as many of my clients discover.
As one client expressed about her book’s origin after completing it:
"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!'" –Jenai 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
I grew up in a highly literary family: both my parents were writers. My father wrote scripts for radio plays in New York City during the "Golden Age of Radio" (the 1940s and '50s), infusing entertainment with deeper meaning. My mother poured her heart into passionate, lyrical short stories. Literary discussions at the dinner table were a staple of our diet.
In this atmosphere, I took in the essence of writing well before my intellect came to have ideas about it.
As I grew into adolescence, it was taken for granted that I, too, would become a writer. But although I had a facility with words, something was missing. Writing did not bring me closer to myself. The inchoate places within me came up against an invisible barrier when I tried to express them on the page. Even consulting a thick dictionary to find the “right words” wasn’t sufficient to bring forth what, somewhere deep inside me, wanted to be known.
I found this mystifying as well as painful. After all, I seemed to have the perfect background for being a writer. I had been schooled through exposure to writing right within the family, from toddler-age bedtime stories to teenage instruction in explicating texts. And, according to stereotypical suffering-artist lore (which was alive and well in my family), I had a wealth of material to draw from. One of my all-time favorite New Yorker cartoons showed a college student writing a letter home, an unhappy expression on her face. The caption read: “Dear mom and dad, thanks a lot for my happy childhood. Now I’ll never be a writer!”
So I had the requisite background. But still, something was missing.
I went on to study literature in college and in graduate school, where I wrote umptillion assigned papers and did well on them by fulfilling the standards that were expected of me. But still I couldn’t name the missing piece that kept me from feeling like writing was actually of myself. It was kind of a hollow victory to be able to push words around with mastery, yet feel strangely empty inside.
MY JOURNEY TO BECOMING
A BOOK DEVELOPER & CREATIVE MIDWIFE
DISCOVERING A HEART-CENTERED APPROACH
TO BOOK DEVELOPMENT
DISCOVERING THE SOUL OF MY WORK
After graduate school, I embarked on what would be a 30+-year career in the publications field as a writer, editor, and consultant, working with publishers and authors on a wide range of books. Over the years, I developed keen editing skills—a level of discernment that turned many a sow’s ear into pretty close to a silk purse. (Later on, I would be listed in Who's Who and receive the "Best Editor in the San Francisco Bay Area" award twice).
But even as I pursued and accrued such worldly proofs, still there was something missing. Where was that person who had stood under the blue sky and watched the sunlight radiate through the air? That earlier vision wove its way back into consciousness, and I despaired that that wonder-filled person I’d once been was lost. With a rising sense of anguish I asked myself, "Isn't there more than this?"
There had to be—within me, within every person—more than just the glossy presentation that was the industry standard for published books: “Here’s the formula, do a good job with it, help us sell books by the millions.” What if what got to come forth onto the page was the treasure hidden within the author? (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 readers of such books could then make contact with their own hidden treasure? Wouldn’t that all take place on a whole other level of being?
My midlife-crisis cry—“Is that all there is? Aren’t we here for something more?”—was in fact a call from a deeper realm. And so it opened up a path, not one I was expecting: I went to study transpersonal psychology in graduate school, which would become the foundation of my holistic book development approach.
Transpersonal psychology includes the intersection of the individual ego-self and the larger being that holds us all. Where traditional ego psychology starts with infancy and goes on from there, transpersonal psychology also includes the soul—that infinite, ever-present essential being that undergirds our usual sense of who we are. So while I learned about ego-attachment and the absence of it (whether the infant is well bonded with the parent or primary adult, and the consequences that ensue if yes or if no), I also learned about the soul in everyone, and how it seeks to have a living place in our lives.
Good attachment sets a person’s life on course in harmony with the person’s own being. 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.
Gradually, I realized that this was what I had been looking for. This was the missing piece—not more how-to’s about writing, but the being listened to so I could listen to myself. That there was a place inside—a “hidden treasure,” if you will—that no one had known to notice in me, and that I had hidden away from myself. There had been a lot of talk in my family—much of it fascinating, passionate, brilliant—but very little listening.
This realization would eventually shape my life's healing work with authors: listening people who wanted to write a book into their essential, genuine expression. Listening is a form of loving. Listening opens the doors for the deeper Self to become felt, known, and present.
So in my work as a Book Developer & Creative Midwife, I seek to bring about good attachment—not just with me, but within the person. There is a positive attachment and self-honoring at a deeper level that comes from being truly listened to. And this naturally makes its way onto the page.
This is what I have been doing for a good many years. I help people write the books that are truly in them, making the writing process a labor of love and divine discovery rather than an “I better get good at this” conditioned task.
It makes a world of difference — for the author, for the book, and for the readers.
MY PROFESSIONAL, SPIRITUAL, & ARTISTIC GIFTS
AT YOUR SERVICE
I bring to my work with clients this richly textured background, which I draw from both invisibly and intentionally:
~ PROFESSIONAL & EDUCATIONAL ~
My 30+ years in the publications field as an experienced book developer, writer, and consultant, combined with my training in the subtle art of Sufi healing (see below), allows me to offer you support that is uniquely right for you —helping you craft writing that not only is structurally sound and compelling but also connects to deeper dimensions of human experience.
~ ARTISTIC ~
As a visual artist and musician as well as a writer, I bring multiple creative perspectives to our work together:
My visual art sensibility helps you evoke vivid images and impressions in your writing.
My musical facility helps you discover rhythm and tone in your breath and nervous system.
This quiets the self-critical mind and allows your inherent rhythm and tone to naturally
show up in your writing.My own development as a writer helps me recognize your unique creative capacities and
bring them forth from the potential (“nothing”) into the reality of your written book (“something”).
~ HEALING ~
As an ordained Healing Conductor in the Sufi tradition of Hazrat Inayat Khan, I approach book development as a healing art. The process of being deeply listened to connects you with your heart and inner knowing. Seeing yourself reflected back with compassionate understanding provides your own Hidden Treasure with a natural conduit for flowing onto the page, which opens you to an experience of 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, The Mysticism of Music, Sound, and Word
THE WRITING FROM THE DEEPER SELF PATH OF
LISTENING,
EFFORTLESS WRITING,
& HEALING
My work as a Book Developer & Creative Midwife is a primary way I use my facility as a healer, creating an effortless writing process through compassionate book development. Simply being deeply listened to is healing—it connects you with your heart and inner knowing.
Seeing yourself reflected back with compassionate understanding, insightfulness, and encouragement is healing, and helps you listen to yourself. This opens up a natural confidence in listening to yourself, and provides your own Hidden Treasure with a conduit for flowing onto the page.
Rather than giving formulaic instructions about writing or focusing solely on market considerations, I use deep listening and gentle attentiveness to reveal the contours of who you are, what matters to you, and the unique creativity you are capable of. This becomes the foundation of your writing process — a foundation that traditional approaches often skip over in their rush to get to technique and structure. As you discover your own natural creative ways, what is in you that seeks expression finds fulfilling expression.
As my esteemed client, author Shoshana Fershtman, expressed about her experience with my work:
"Naomi has been a precious guide... 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."—Shoshana Fershtman, JD, PhD, Author, The Mystical Exodus in Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma and the Wellsprings of Renewal
If what I’ve shared with you here calls you to have a conversation with me about your book (whatever stage it’s currently at), I invite you to have a Gift Session.
It’s identical to an actual client session, except there’s no expectation you’ll become a client. (Though many recipients do.)
We’ll listen to you, together.
READY TO EXPLORE MORE WAYS TO CONNECT?
Visit the bottom of my Home Page to discover additional resources and next steps, including:
Reading my books on the creative process,
Signing up for my newsletter (or scroll down to the footer to sign up),
Booking a 1:1 consultation,
And more ways to begin your book journey.
You can also find out more by reading the FAQ page.
I’m happy to have shared something of myself with you,.
perhaps i’ll get to have a conversation with you
to explore the book in you that’s waiting to be known.
You’ll also find helpful writing resources, writing meditations, and curated healing resources (think flower essences for writers) to support your creative journey. See the “Hidden Treasures” just below.