Meditation Challenge part three

Blue boat photograph with kind permission of Edana Minghella

In The Meditation Challenge part two, I told you how the wise words of Tara Brach helped me to gain a perspective on the outcome of submitting my novel to publishing editors, and how meditation helped me to be more creative (I will dedicate a future blog to using meditation for creative energy). My agent had said my novel was ready to send out to editors but I had heard no more, and so I asked for an update.

Meditations for disappointment

If hearing the news that my novel was ready to go out on submission was a high, then it was followed by a low. Apparently, there had not been a great response to ‘the pitch.’ It was going to be a challenge to find a home, as it wasn’t ‘on-trend’ right now and editors were being cautious in the current market. This was before the pandemic and I suspect times are even tougher now for debut authors. Meditation came to my rescue again.

Whatever you need meditation to help you with, type it into the YouTube search engine. It’s an amazing resource. I typed in guided meditation for disappointment and found. Guided meditation for healing disappointments. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyUDFlCjLog  

I have used it again and again. It’s really effective.

Attracting abundance

My agent’s marketing strategy was to first send my novel to one of the big five publishers on an exclusive. This means that they have first refusal, rather than having to bid against other publishing houses. 

I overdosed on meditation. Instead of driving myself crazy imagining different scenarios, I meditated with vengeance. I meditated to invite abundance into my life. There are lots of meditations on using gratitude to create abundance, the theory being that when you are thankful for the good things in your life you attract more. I had a lot to be grateful for – my ‘cup over-floweth.’ In fact, I felt as though I already had too much and I was wrong to want more. But I did. I desperately wanted a publishing contract. 

Some of the meditations on abundance are about using meditation to create prosperity and wealth. I avoided these at they didn’t sit well with me, but I did enjoy The Honest Guys, The Wishing well of Abundance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MPpGZf8wjA

Trusting the journey

It didn’t work. By September, the editor who had my manuscript rejected it and from her comments, I don’t think she could have read it. But, there was a plan. My agent resolved to get my novel into the hands of the right editors and proposed a list of thirteen. We waited until after the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. And waited.

I really believed that good things were going to happen for me. I had absolute faith and confidence. When I wobbled, I repeated my mantra, The right thing will happen at the right time in the right way. You are exactly where you are meant to be right now. I had reason to be optimistic, I had a brilliant agent and my manuscript had been sent out to a number of publishers. There was nothing I could do except concentrate on writing my next novel, which was progressing well.

I am a bit of a control freak. This served me well in the past, as I founded two successful businesses but I needed to learn to let go and trust the process. My daily meditations now included ones to help me do just that.

Meditations for letting go

• The Mindful Movement – Trust the Journey

• Jason Stephenson – Surrender Meditation, letting go of control. This one is also good for disappointment or coping with life changes.

• Honest Guys. A guided meditation for letting go.

As weeks passed without any news, I managed my anxiety by imagining that I was in a rowing boat. I pulled the oars inside and lay back to allow the boat to take me along the river. When the boat got caught on reeds, I waited patiently knowing that the flow of the river would dislodge us and carry us to the ocean. It was a soothing thought.

‘If we haven’t got an offer by Christmas we’ll meet to discuss the next steps’, my agent reassured me. So, there were next steps. This wasn’t the end of the journey. Equipped with positive affirmations, I clung to the sides of that little boat and willed the river to carry us onward. 

In the fourth and final blog of The Meditation Challenge, I will tell you where the river took me.

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