About

What is a story?

To the reader, stories exist to entertain, challenge, or educate.

The writer is often focused on those goals, and tries to achieve them through the logical, analytic, left-brained aspect to writing, which involves keeping things consistent, planning out the plot, etc.

But a story can be much more.
There’s a side to writing, which digs deep into the hidden parts of our mind to explore, to let the story write itself, to let ideas and images burst out, and surprise the writer, as much as any reader.

Every story can be a personal journey for the writer into the extraordinarily powerful part of the mind that is often called the unconscious.

Some people call the unconscious the Energy Mind.
This hidden part of us operates through metaphor, and, some of us believe, can touch upon realities and possibilities invisible to us in our everyday life.

How do you prompt that other mind to tell you a story?
Sometimes you just ask it what’s next, and listen for images and words that answer the question.

I also use a variety of techniques from Silvia Hartmann, a brilliant, creative woman from the UK.

These explorations are part game, lucid dream, out-of-the-body experience, virtual reality, and fiction.

If this is a kind of game, then, so is all of life.

The key books that teach her techniques are Project Sanctuary and The Genius Symbols.

Another place to get more information is at The Project Sanctuary Site.

For more information about me, see my Fearless Dreams Personal Growth Blog

I haven’t added to the blog in a long time. The stories keep me busy.

Structure
There are various ways to use WordPress to display books.

I use the Organize Series plugin, along with categories, and some custom code in pages, and text widgets.
Here’s how it works.

1. I divide each book into several parts (story collections). For example, Book 1 (Traveling Home) is divided into four parts.
2. I define a series for each story collection. Their names are:
   • Part 1:Watchtower
   • Part 2: Apprentice
   • Part 3: Visions
   • Part 4: Healing

   Organize Series provides each post with its own table of contents for all of the other posts in the related collection.
   I configure Organize Series, so it displays the table of contents for the story collection (part) on the single page for each post, but not on pages which show multiple posts.

3. I define a category for each book, and a subcategory for each story collection. Each post is categorized with the main and subcategory relevant to the story collection.
4. I define a page for each book, and a subpage for each story collection. The names I use for those pages are the same as the names that I’ve used above for the four series.
   • I use code snippets, invoked from the book page to list all the subpages within a list. For example:
   • I use code snippets on the subpage for the collection to list all of the posts with the category associated with that collection, and use the order of the posts within the series to sort the list.
5. I create a side menu that shows all 3 books and their sections (with links to the collection pages)

Theme (Atahualpa Settings) no longer in use

• I set the more option to: “
  [Continue reading: %post-title%”
• Changed two options within “Next Previous Navigation” set of options, to blank out previous_post link and next_post link on single pages. We’ll primarily rely on the story navigation in the menu or left sidebar, and the series navigation at the bottom of each post.
• “Newer Post” link on SINGLE post pages: set option value to blank
• “Older Post” link on SINGLE post pages: set option value to blank