Dear Friend, I Can’t Write Past the First Page

11/2/2023 | Miro Tea, Seattle

Dear Friend,

Super Phoenix green tea is buttery inside my mouth and I’m victorious! I’ve transformed another page of reality into fantasy. I realized I was stuck on the first scene of the story. I was writing and rewriting the same scene over and and over until madness overcame me. I felt cursed by this project, doomed to dwell on the opening scene forever. Then a miraculous idea bonked me in the head yesterday. I’m not surprised I had a simple breakthrough. I spent the entire day lounging on the floor with cozy blankets and reading someone else’s fiction. A day off is the best solution for most problems. I was tempted multiple times to write but I resisted and trusted my brain to do its processing behind the scenes. Without fail, rest serves me. I awoke this morning with energy to write and a brand new idea that is painfully obvious now that its before me.

I decided to jump forward to the next scene. I was getting hung up on a desire to write from the beginning to end without skipping around. I was so stuck on doing it this one way that my tires started spinning and time was flying out the back like mud, wasted. By jumping forward one scene, I got to work on a fresh part of the project that I hadn’t touched in a long time. Suddenly, the heavy muddy slog was gone! I actually had fun writing this morning because I felt light and playful.

In this scene, my main character is in a classroom and the other main character is distracting her through the window. In reality this classroom was a yoga studio. In the fantasy realm I created a witch’s tower. I transformed a square orange painted drywall yoga studio in the city of Seattle into a circular stone tower up in the clouds in some mystical far away never land realm. It didn’t take much. I just change a few adjectives and the imagination runs with it.

I am continually amazed by the power of my imagination. I change one word and it creates a completely new picture. The new picture leads me to completely new emotions and the characters start to behave in new ways. Where do the ideas come from? Where do the songs come from? Wherever they come from, the way they get here is through a portal that is opened when I enter flow state.

Enough writing for today (or at least this morning). I’m going to go back to Elizabeth’s house for lunch and then soon I’ll skip to the airport and hop down to Los Angeles with my music making parts at the ready!

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

My Life Slowly Revolves Around the Sun

I wake naturally between 3-5am, ready for the sunrise. Beneath the last stars I sip warm cacao. Sensitive emotions and honest thoughts flow in with the morning breeze. Sometimes I write them down and sometimes I just enjoy listening. I lay down and wait for the wind to blow the day away. Soon the sun is so bright I am blind. I go inside to write. I spend hours laying on my favorite blanket and letting the ocean breeze blow through the open doors, caressing my skin on its way through the house. For lunch, I carve open a papaya and fill it with fresh avocado and sweet sweet passionfruit. When life is slow and simple, a special meal like this is an event to behold.

I have abandoned stress. Rush has no place on these hills. Everyone is smiling and moving with the current. It seems the gods are happy with our offerings. We are mindful of our words. Reality is blossoming from our thoughts. When I sense the sun is ready to fall asleep behind the volcano, I drive along the coast. The moon rises while I am practicing yoga in the outdoor jungle gym with my new friends. We are all laughing as we swing from bamboo bars and try to balance on our hands. We drink from fresh coconuts and eat bananas.

From the cliff, we watch the ocean spread out and our eyesight stretches further than the screens. I’m creating a simple life on the cliffs above the ocean and my time is lost out there at sea, never to return. It’s lovely. I eat fruit. I read. I write. I paint. I breathe. I stretch. I enjoy deep philosophical and psychological conversations over nutritious dinners in an enchanted garden full of pink flowers and hiding fairies.

When I sense stress is sneaking up the stairs, eager to knock on my door and spook me, I wander down to the black sand beach. I message my friend Made who meets me under the umbrella with a sarong. She gives me an hour long massage as the ocean lullabies me. I luxuriate in sensation and my creativity has never been so healthy and ripe, just like the fruit I’m eating. My body is healthy. My mind is stimulated. My heart is open. My spirituality is moving through creatively.

I am producing new dance music inspired by Florence + The Machine. I am writing a fantasy novel that is very inspired by my recent stargazing. I am naked on my porch with wet paint on my hands and knees. I’m smearing colors on large canvases to abstractly express the beauty I see in the sky each morning. The moment urgency taps on my shoulder, I usher her back out the door with a gentle instruction. “Go play in the dirt at the foot of the frangipani tree.”


There is no rush.
There is no rush.
There is no rush.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha in the Wilde

Dear Friend, My Book is a Puzzle

8/9/2023
Amed. Bali

Dear Friend,

I’ve taken to writing on the cliffs. I sip jasmine tea and admire the shades of blue stretching out to the horizon. Thousands of palm leaves shake along the hillside and I feel the same breeze soft on my skin. The pages in my journal flip back and forth. I’m writing this novel by hand. I’m also typing it. It depends on my mood. Sometimes, I can’t bare to look at the laptop screen. Curse digital words! Hand me an inky pen! 

There is no such thing as writers block in my life. If one door won’t open, I go find another way in. If words won’t be typed then they will be scribbled. If paper is unappetizing too then I will make notes on my phone. I’ve learned that typing with only my thumbs is a completely different flavor of experience than typing with all ten fingers. Thumbs, hands and pens, big screens, small screens and paper. Some characters feel safer showing up on paper. Their voices sound different when poured out in ink. Editing is fun on the laptop, tedious on the phone and nearly impossible on in the paper notebook. 

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When I write the story by hand, I am committing to flowing forward. Whatever idea comes to me next, I roll with it and the story has to shape around one idea at a time, each one building on the one before. On the laptop, pieces the puzzle can move around, copying and pasting their way into sense. On the paper, I see plot holes and contradictions open up before my eyes and there’s nothing I can do about it apart from fit the next idea in. On paper, it’s like improvisational theater. Just go with it. Say YES and keep going. We’ll end up with something interesting in the end.

One day, I will be typing up these words that were handwritten. For now, the handwriting is my way into this fantasy realm when I’m tired of working and in the mood to just create without the pressure to be perfect. Strange, isn’t it? It’s more pressure to write by hand because I cannot easily revise. I must commit to what I just wrote and move forward with it. This pressure to commit actually gives me freedom to keep going. I don’t get stuck in indecision or the overwhelm of endless possibilities. Make a choice and go. This pressure squeezes me and then I pop through with a light heart. I want to create with this lightheart, never taking myself or my work seriously while always being very seriously devoted to the process of creating. I’m seriously devoted to not being serious. 

And so today, I watch a large sailboat drifting in the bay and I write a scene about a dragon who is changing colors while a little girl throws a tantrum and a man falls asleep. I re-read words I wrote months ago and I’m laughing to myself to feel that they were written by another woman…a woman I used to be. Writing this book is a transformational process because it’s exposing me to a new way of experiencing life; it is a daily norm for me to exist under heavy pressure while also giggling with playful imagination. It is the classic metaphor of the diamond. It’s an intense process to sparkle so vibrantly. Totally worth it in these moments when I pause to reflect. Totally a pain in the ass and a simple pleasure the rest of the time.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

PS: This book is a puzzle with a hundred thousand pieces. I’ve never enjoyed puzzles. This is the most complex puzzle I’ve ever faced and the first one I’m truly devoted to completing. I review everything I’ve written and at first I’m nervous to see how many different versions of the character I’ve written about…and then I wonder…is this just the character’s arch? I’ve written about her in so many ways, in so many places and times because she has moved through all of that from where she started to where she is now. Her story is a journey and I’m actually seeing the journey laid out before me. It’s a lot of to take in and tie together seamlessly. Right now, this book is just piles of puzzle pieces grouped by color. 

Learning to Surrender: Writing a Novel Through Darkness to Light

Dear Reader,

Today the sun shines on Bali and the island and all her people are at the grand ceremony. Shops are closed or they open late because the gods are gathering for the offerings. I arrive at the cafe two hours before it opens and I sit on the seat outside, laptop open, alone and ready to edit. 

We’ve come to the part of this journey when I must bring out my swords and my scalpel. I open the pages I’ve written and read through with a monocle and a stiff spine. I click the delete button all morning long, slicing away paragraphs, pages and phrases. 

I read what I wrote long ago and some pieces impress me. Wow, I wrote that? Is a lovely thought to hear in my head. I’m smiling at my own imagination and memories. There is so much joy alive in this story. And there is darkness. 

The air is full of Balinese prayers today so I decide to drop myself into the heaviest words I’ve written. I’m rereading the most depressing part of the story, written when my hands were holding myself up and my words were washed out by a withering spirit.

The resistance was real this morning. I do not feel like reading this sad stuff. I do it anyway and celebrate that I no longer think these thoughts or feel these feelings. Sure, the voice sounds familiar and I remember where I was sitting when I wrote all this but it’s so long gone now. I’m grateful it will all only sink further away with time. 

A part of me does a happy dance to feel done with the darkness, excited that we moved through it and that writing our way through it was effective. Another part wants to delete it all and forget about it, ready to end the reflection and dwelling in the past. Another part wants to publish it and pray it helps someone out there who needs it because even if I’m done feeling these feelings, they’re still true and being lived by someone else. I wrote myself out of the darkness and someone else will read their way out when they find my words. So I keep writing and editing. Little steps of progress towards the finish line where I believe some completed story awaits me. I imagine a bound novel all sparkly and fresh, ready to be devoured by someone’s imagination. By that point, how will my own imagination feel? Ready for a new adventure?

Every day, I’m asked to surrender more. This story is becoming something different than the something I envisioned it to be. I feel pulled between telling the story exactly as it happened to me and embracing the creative license to spice it up and switch things around in a way that feels more playful. I’m loyal to playfulness and I’m practicing letting go of whatever feels stiff and unhelpful. Writing this book is a spiritual bootcamp and I feel like a very different woman than the one who started this project. 

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

8/2/23
Amed, Bali

The Joy of My Simple Writers Life in Amed, Bali

Dear Friend,

I woke up later today and the sun was blinding too soon. My morning womb was missed and I plunged straight into the heat of the living day. I’ve moved to the quiet part of town were the loudest noises I hear are the leaves rustling in the breeze. Even the roosters are distant out here.

I’m staying in a simple bungalow that serves me perfectly with one exception. I’m sorely missing a writing desk. I’ve pull the wicker chair up to the provided table but my legs do no slide underneath and so I am cramped and curled. I’ve escaped to the cafe to utilize their desk like tables and I’ve taken to work in bedd with the laptop on my legs. Neither are ideal as the cafe is too noisy and the bed is too lazy.

The siesta life is taking over my body. My heart longs for respite from the hot sun burning my skin any chance it gets. I’m scurrying like a mouse from shady spot to shady spot and counting the hours until dusk. I suspect this desire for darkness is the consequence of my inward turning mind and soul. I’m in deep reflection mode, artist retreat, writer lifestyle, monk mode right now…looking inside myself for the answers to the questions I’m asking about this novel I’m sketching out on paper and screen.

Thank the stars for my returned motivation to workout and practice yoga. My body really has been screaming for more movement and a regular block of time to push itself to limits that are not connected to creative projects.

The birds are always singing here. I have two giant red dragonfruits in the refrigerator wondering when I’ll eat them. My cacao paste supply is dwindling and I’m crossing my fingers that the local shop will replenish their stock so I can replenish mine. Cacao is my medicine of choice this month. I’m drinking it morning and night to accompany my writing practice. in the morning I sip it while journaling. In the evening I sip it while writing fantasy fiction. This chocolate beverage enters my bloodstream and my heart chakras open up. Within twenty minutes, I’m having creative breakthroughs, seeing colorful imaginations, tapping into emotions that had been neatly tucked away, and sensing the muscles in my chest tensing with compassion for the faces I look upon.

If you’ve been attending my online yoga classes (for studio members or on YouTube), I’m so grateful to see you showing up. The regularity has allowed us to dive deeper into the subjects we’re exploring. This week we’ve been looking at yoga poses you can do in bed before falling asleep. I love how honest our conversations are in these interactive livestreams. I continue to be inspired by the messages I receive from fans and students. People have always inspired me to keep going.

Speaking of which, I must keep going now on the writing of this novel. I’ve given myself hours of lunchtime to practice yoga and eat quinoa, sweet potato wedges and green juice. Now…now it is time to get naked and find some words to tell a story that is literally inside my heart and needs to work its way to the surface and somehow magically transform into ink on paper. Let’s go!

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Digging Dramatically into the Past to Write a Fantasy Book

Pour me another cup of green tea. The air is too hot to sit comfortably. The ink on my journal page smears as I wipe away the drop of tea that just jumped out of the pot. I moved my body in the open jungle gym this morning, lifting weights with a view of the Bali Sea. The open ocean hasn’t spoken to me in weeks. She’s over there. I visit occasionally but mostly I’ve stayed in the garden listening to the birds. I need dirt and grass right now. My emotions need earthy stability for a while as I husband and wife this book. I’m discovering the story as it pours through me.

Do I sound melodramatic if I tell you that this book is a goodbye to my past? I’m indulging in the past, swimming through it like a gorgeous coral garden admiring my memories. I’m chewing through it like a box of chocolates. (I haven’t eaten chocolate in over a month and I’m on day 47 without coffee. Celebrating and craving. Keeping my body as clean as possible. It’s the pipe through which this creative water is flowing.)

I’m crying on the video call with my husband today. He’s sensitive and logical. As usual, a young part of me wants to feel special. She wants to be the center of everyone’s world. “Miss me more!” She cries. “I do miss you,” he says. “But I don’t let myself dwell on it. I could have spent the weekend crying about the fact you weren’t here. I could have compared everyone to else to you. I would have been miserable. When those type of thoughts came up, I said NO. I didn’t let myself go there. I feel I’m in a new chapter. Moving forward. Enjoying the present. I had a really fun weekend.”

He’s leading me in the right direction. I want to move forward too. My parts glare at me, wondering why we’re digging in the past, fixating on old feelings, pouring our precious life energy into this resurrection project. “Just let it go!” They plead with me wondering when I’ll take them to the art supply store to buy paint or diving out there in the ocean a little bit deeper than before. “Let’s get back to making music and performing. You love performing and teaching! Let’s get back to hosting dinner parties!” I’m listening. I comfort them and promise them we will dance merrily in the present moment, celebrating life in all these lovely ways. We are in the present as I write this book. I have boundaries. We dip into the past to suck out a memory that we weave into this storybook. Then we return to the turquoise pool and smell the plumeria flower that just fell in my lap.

My writing coach encourages me to collaborate with my parts in these moments. Ask the parts of me who are afraid of dwelling in the past how we can write in a way that helps them move forward. How do we use the magic of creativity to help us safely enter the past, harvest it for inspiration, process whatever has been stuck back there, whatevers got us hooked like fabric caught on a twig as we walk through the forest, and then move forward to create something new. We create something new FROM the past. We move forward FROM the past. It’s not something to be pushed away, run away from, or ignored. As a first time novelista, I’m learning to turn and face my past and extend my hand to it kindly, inviting the lessons, wisdom and happy memories to step forward with me. To the pain and unpleasantness back there, I can let them scream one more time on the page, giving those exiled parts a chance for their voices to be heard and honored, so they can be unburdened with truth and choose to join us in the present or fall peacefully in death. Oh, here’s the drama leeking out again. Hard to stop once I start. 

I’m laughing with the barista who tells me he loves me. A piece of his heart belongs to me. He’s a flirt. He says that to all the girls he pours coffee for. I wish he was pouring a coffee for me. Just hot water over those tea leaves for now, please and thank you.

My only job right now is to heal; to move, listen and write. I’m clearing the cobwebs from my past so I can move on even more grounded in my body, fully present than before. Imagine trying to move into a new home without emptying your old one. I have some skeletons in my closets and shit stuffed under the rug. Yes, painting and playing in the ocean today is appealing but there are chores to be done in my inner house. I warned you I was indulging in melodrama, diving into the psyche more often than the ocean. Needless to say, I’m also practicing balance. I take days away from the writing to be right here and now, to not think about anywhere else I’d rather be. I am somewhere over a rainbow these days, hunting for gold. One day, I’ll return home with a book in my hands.

Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde

Writing and Coffee in the Jungle of Koh Chang, Thailand

I locked myself on an island and started writing a book. Write away all day! I let my writer part(s) take over my body completely. no care for fitness and balance, rest or friends. The time, ten days, alone on an island to write it all down. Get it out and get it out quickly please. Flush the system in our isolation so we may journey on into the world for fun adventures with our beloveds. Speak the damn truths that we’ve been hauling around so heavy for long enough. Write them down on the phone. Write in the book, in the Google Drive, on the scratch paper. In the phone memos. My fingers are cramped now, crooked from typing with my thumbs on the phone for hours. The pinky finger at the bottom, stretched under the balance the device. When we leave this island, we will be finished with this spirit. We’ll return to a healthier routine in which writing had its sacred morning space and isn’t allowed to bulldoze through the jungle at any hour thoughtless of our health and other interests. Write away!!

Why do I feel like I’m on a jungle cruise adventure at Disney land? The deck of the bungalows are broken, window glass on the floor. I wouldn’t be surprised if a monkey jumped out screaming. Vines are taking over. Jungle people are hammering on some project that looks already devastated. Are they repairing this? Was it COVID? How long have all these stores, resorts and homes been derelict? Why are so many building abandoned or empty, boarded up, even with people living amongst them. I can’t quite workout what’s going on.

Poverty is on the road side, by American standards. It doesn’t feel like poverty here. Just another cement block home, ragged sun faded tshirts drying on hangers from a wire hung between palm trees. It’s not cute rustic. It’s dirty and grim. Everything here is a bit grim, casually falling apart in a way that doesn’t concern anybody. Simple in a way I don’t wish to experience because it feels stuck rather than charming. This is me speaking though and it’s hard for me to forget what perfection looks like in Hollywood and Seattle. There are no cracks, no dirt, no plants taking over. The plants are kept in their place. The dirt is swept away before it accumulates. The cracks mean it’s time to completely demolish and rebuild a shopping mall.

In the Gulf of Thailand, everybody’s just living in the jungle next to old abandoned huts, smoking weed, playing reggae, blending up mango shakes, wacking machetes into coconuts, selling 300 BAHT one hour full body oil massages on the beach, eating pad Thai if you’re a tourist or spicy basil fried rice if you’re a local, and pulling scooters over to the side of the road to watch the ocean at sunset.

Even the finest of hotels has got the geckos crawling on the ceilings and the creak of nature in the walls. What is there to compare to here? This is not run down when we’re in the wilderness where even the trees are rotting and that’s normal. Nature made and man made objects are disintegrating in their own time and nobody seems bothered by it. Like every beach cafe in the world, we know we’re going to erode when we live beside the salt water. I am more at peace falling apart here surrounded, enveloped by earth as she crumbles beside me.

The jungle road curves through the trees. Up and down. High up I gaze over the ocean, soft blue ripples. Down low the roads are perfect, smooth, wide and rolling.

Come drive around this island one day. Follow my footsteps. Stay at Jungle View Bungalows (for private garden pool) and Cliff Cottages Resort (for epic ocean view and cute common area that feels like a beach hut living room). Eat at Tofu Kitchen (healthy vegetarian Thai food), Sea Chill Bar (for classic Thai food on the dock over the ocean at sunset), Indie Raw (for sushi and healthy smoothies plus air conditioning and a couch to lay back on), Indie Beach (for same food as Indie Raw but your feet are in the sand and you can live here too or go paddleboarding). Get foot massages at Paradise Massage, workout at BB Gym in Lonely Beach, go scuba diving with Koh Chang Divers, enjoy the best coffee on the island in the Fig Cafe garden (sweetest customer service ever - they serve you coffee with two hands and bow), watch the sunset into the ocean with a beverage at The Mount (treehouse vibes), and escape the entire world with a day on Long Beach (it’s an epic scooter ride to the end of the island, isolated, hot and magical).

If you’ve never been to Thailand what should I tell you? Random, scruffy, delicious, warm, you’ll be left alone to do what you please, obsession with colleges, 7 Elevens are your best friend, marajuana at the ready, jungle adventure ride, best mangoes ever.

Fig Cafe. This is how coffee is done. Drink preference remembered. Delivered to me with two hands.

“Flat white oak milk to go for you”

And a bow.

Khob Khun Ka

Khap

Swinging by the waves I cannot see, only hear, before bedtime. Give me a coconut and I’ll scrape that thing clean. Thai coconuts have thick moist meat inside and fresh sweet water. Indonesian coconuts, at least the ones I’ve been given, don’t quite compare…where’s all the fleshy white filling Bali coconuts, huh?

Love & Rainbows,

Cha Wilde