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Date: 7th July 2017, Posted by mollie
A few of you have asked about “the intruder.’ I’ve shared how writing romance saved my life on my non-fiction blog and thought I’d share with you here. We all know how wonderful it is to escape into a good romance, but who would have thought a great love story could save your life?
Here’s the post with a short summary of our terrifying encounter with a trespasser:
Even if you’re not an aspiring writer there are loads of mindset strategies in The Prosperity for Authors Series to help you deal with life, build greater resilience and persevere with your dreams.
In fact, recently I put some of the strategies I share both in book two, Productivity Hacks: Do Less & Make More and the first book in this series, Developing a Millionaire Mindset, to good use after a terrifying encounter with a violent intruder.
Curiously, and thankfully, writing saved me—both before and after the aggressive trespass. I had woken around midnight and decided to check Amazon for one of my romances The Italian Billionaire’s Christmas Bride.
I had only been in my writing room for five minutes when I heard a van come up the long drive on our semi-rural property in The Bay of Islands.
Immediately I sensed danger. I knew instinctively it was the stranger who had come to our door the prior evening pretending to be lost.
Now, he returned again. He drove toward the house with his lights off, determined to hide beneath the cover of darkness.
Strangely, the Kiwis, New Zealand’s native, flightless and nocturnal birds that roam our property screeched loudly—as though warning me.
I heard the intruder swear. Terrified, I ran to wake my partner—and counted my blessings that he is a very alpha male with a black belt.
A long night involving the police ensued. And for three days this man, who we later discovered had a violent past and mental health problems, continued to harass us —insisting we were hiding his wife and children.
It took some doing, but I refused to let him infect our lives, or impact my productivity any more than he had. Anger is such a destructive force—as is fear. The best coping mechanism I know is to channel potentially toxic emotions into something I love—writing.
So I picked up my pen.
As I write this chapter just days after the event even though I can still feel the fear, the anxiety, the terror—it is less now. This event triggered buried memories of previous traumas involving obsessive, controlling men with a propensity for violence.
However, I have successfully ‘counselled’ myself by writing and journaling my way through my emotions.
As Catherine Jones writes in her aptly named book, Heal Yourself With Writing, creativity is therapy. “Journaling is a creative inner dialogue with one’s Self,” she says. And she is right.
Rather than lose further productive time I wrote my way through my terror and cleared space to create.
Rather than say, “I’m too traumatized, too tired, too uninspired to write,” I wrote anyway.
I focused on my goal for the day—in this case, to finish the edits for the first book in this series, Developing a Millionaire Mindset.
And I bribed myself with the promise of chocolate when I had completed my task.
Writing is my joy. My passion. My great love. And nobody, I vowed, would rob me of that. I would stay drunk on writing, I affirmed so that reality could not destroy me.
In time, I know I will use this experience for scenes in my fiction books and perhaps even pen a self-empowerment book to help others who may have experienced similar trauma. And of course, I have used this truly frightening experience in my life to write this chapter.
The experience also reminded me that I should complete a half-finished manuscript, Keeper of My Heart—a romantic suspense about a woman running from a violent past and the handsome lawyer who protects her.
Mining for Gold
Is reality sucking the joy from your day? How can you stay drunk on writing?
This is an edited extract from The Prosperous Author: How to Make a Living With Your Writing (Book One: Developing a Millionaire Mindset by Cassandra Gaisford. ORDER THE EBOOK TODAY, SAVE and SEND YOUR ORDER CONFIRMATION AND RECEIVE YOUR FREE BONUS GIFTS—Click the Amazon link here getBook.at/TheProsperousAuthor
Develop A Millionaire Mindset Today!
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