Finishing My First Novel: A Tools Success Story
by Ruby Mathias (aka Rachel Morris)
In June of 2018, I left a luxury resort in Oman after spending a week in my beautiful suite suffering from depression, despair, and paralyzed agony about all the things I was putting off, the chances I’d lost, people I’d let down. I walked into the Muscat Airport bookshop and saw Phil Stutz and Barry Michel’s Tools book Coming Alive.
It was not only like running into a compassionate friend, it was the beginning of the way out and the path by which I would come to publish my first crime novel one year later (a spooky and “sweary” detective thriller set in Wales).
BREAKING THROUGH
The initial idea for the book had arrived 10 years before that, and I had spent the next 9 getting in my own way about it. Finally, this past year I broke through—and The Tools were a huge contributing factor in that.
On a personal level, the faffing was a complex stew of neuroses, fear, procrastination, self-sabotage, and OCDish time-wasting on “rituals” and “systems.” I kept up a good public face for the most part, but at a huge private cost.
On a practical level, it was like I had been walking at night with a flashlight. I could only see the next few feet in front of me, so I stood still for nine years, waiting for more light. Recently I finally twigged that as long as I kept walking, I could see as far as I needed to. Writing one chapter naturally led to what the next should be about. I didn’t even need an outline.
I’m not going to say it was easy exactly. It was long hours, during the last month in particular. And I only pushed through the final resistance near the end because my dad was ill and I wanted him to see it. But most of it was flow, exhilarating, channelling-the-numinous stuff, and I highly recommend it. Paradoxically, the book wouldn’t have been nearly as good if I’d finished it any sooner.
SHARING THE TOOLS
When I left Oman it was to return to managing a truly challenging education project in Saudi Arabia. Even the strongest teacher on my team, a woman with some of the best coping and classroom management skills I’ve ever seen, was reaching the end of her tether. I passed Coming Alive to her, and it helped her tremendously. The students knew to be quiet and give her a moment’s peace when she sat and closed her eyes; she was using the Black Sun Tool.
A NEW CHAPTER
I’m starting my next book now, keeping the momentum up using the limitless energy of The Mother Tool. At age 53, I am finally making a new life, the one I’ve dreamed of. I’m working with a book of interviews with people who are starting life anew in middle-age or older. We have a closed Facebook group called The Order of the Acorn. Oak trees don’t start dropping acorns until around the age of 50; I know the feeling.
Thank you, again, for The Tools.
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