Tonight is our first client community phone call and we’re all so excited to watch our clients interact and benefit from one another. We have attracted a very specific kind of person to our business model; every one of our clients is motivated to better a niche of the world: women, children, families, Latinos, African Americans, leaders. When you bring people together who are all aligned in intent, each with powerful networks of their own, magic happens. We look forward to this first call and to building a community of change.

What does it take to stir up your emotions? I listened to Barack Obama’s victory speech after the South Carolina primary this weekend and was truly inspired. I had a run-in with an unreliable plumber and I was inspired once again…this time to react in a different way with a well-crafted letter of complaint. And I am inspired by Robert Renteria, author of From The Barrio to the Board Room. So inspired that I want to spread the word about his success as a person. Inspiration can come in many forms: joy, frustration, excitement, and sadness. However it comes to you, don’t let it slip through your fingers. Embrace that moment and react. Write a letter to the editor. Write a note to someone important in your life. Share your feelings. Spread the inspiration.

Writing is a process. I’ve heard that mantra since college. I’ve also said it to others a million times or more. Well, nowhere is the truth in that statement more obvious and relevant to me than in the work we do here at Writers of the Round Table. I mean, it’s easy to take the process for granted when working on your own projects; as writers, our own processes can become just sort of integral to the way we do things. When working with other people, though, it is absolutely essential–and absolutely so ultimately rewarding–to be able to step back, and give our tried-and-true processes room to evolve to meet the individual needs at hand. After all, our clients approach us with not just projects, manuscripts, ideas. They approach us with dreams, usually dreams that have been alive and kicking in them for years…dreams that they envision carrying them into the future, shaping their lives, creating legacies.

I’m happy to say that as our clients learn and grow in the process of crafting their project, so do we. Each new project is more than just a project. It’s the birth of team, of a synergy between people all pulling for the life of words and the ways in which those words, in turn, bring life to more ideas. Lives are challenged and changed in the journey that IS creating a book, script, screenplay, biography…you name it. At every stop of the journey, the team is steeped in–and sometimes tossed around by–the ebb and flow of finding and maintaining its stride. And what a joyous process that is!

As a writer who has worked with graphic designers for many years, I’ve often been overruled by the “look” of a piece versus the “message”. “Nobody reads the text,” I was told time and time again. Sigh…. Now, with the Internet, the power of the pen is evident. After getting over the initial romance with Flash, the online population is clearly more focused on the words, not the pictures (okay, YouTube is the exception). They’re seeking information. Look at SEO. You can boost your site’s ranking by using the right keyword, adding even more words on a regular basis, and blogging, which is exclusively words! Here at Writers of The Round Table, we raise our pens and do a collective wave across our keyboards. Power to the writers!

It’s always a pleasure to speak to Michael and feel his infectious passion. Last night, Bea fields and I interviewed Michael on Y-Talk Radio about In The Dreaming Room and his new book, Awakening The Entrepreneur Within. So much fun. I went to three In The Dreaming Room events last year. I’m excited to return again in 2008!

For chess players around the world, this is a huge loss; not only because we have lost an icon in the chess world, but a genius strategist. As a chess player for more than 20 years now, i have brought my strategic thinking to my producing, my directing, my story-telling and now to my clients at Writers of the Round Table and Writers of the Round Table Press. The ability to make many moves at a time that converge on a larger goal, is not one that everyone possess. Here’s to Bobby Fischer, a hero to those of us who have been intentional about our moves through business and through life.

Yesterday, we had two client phone calls that clicked! And I love it when we’re working creatively with an entire team (usually three or four people on a call like this) and suddenly a new idea solves a problem we had not even recognized existed yet. On one of our fiction projects, we were discussing the tag line for the book, and through that exploration we determined a major flaw within the structure of the plot of the story. Because we were investigating and brainstorming openly, we discovered the problem and then determined a breathtaking solution. And this is a project we are already into our fourth month on! We already recognize that the story has brilliance, but the process of unlocking that brilliance is where the true journey lives!

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