TEP3 begins…

This week marks the official start to The Empowered Project (TEP3). We spent Tuesday’s coaching call working on exploring and journaling about our vision for this project. We dove deep into the whys of our projects and examined what impact we hoped to have on ourselves and others.

It was good to put into words the thoughts that have been under the surface as I’ve worked on my book. I think the prompt that took me by surprise the most was “How do I want my readers to feel after engaging with my book?”

Answer: “I want readers to feel like they’ve made a new friend. I want them to be immersed in the world and characters in a way that feels like it’s real.”

My answer wasn’t as profound as I thought it “should” be, so I added “I want them to feel validated and worthy of healing.”

But then I realized that the reason that I read books is to feel a connection to the characters, so why can’t that be the reason for others to read mine? Do people really need to walk away thinking “Oh wow. That was so powerful. I need to find RPG Therapy near me.”

Not at all. As a matter of fact, Quest Therapy, while based on my research into RPG Therapy, is not real and I’ve never been in a session and can’t say if I’m accurately representing the process or not. But I hope that the reader comes away wanting to know what comes next for the characters. I want them to feel disappointed when they get to the end because they wanted to keep visiting their friends. I want them to immediately go looking for a sequel, in hopes of spending more time with the characters.

To be honest, these characters are my friends. I think about them as real people that I can talk to (and have). They are telling me their story. Not the other way around. All I’m doing is recording it so that others can be there too. If it encourages someone to get help, that’s just bonus.

This week has gone super well as far as working on Draft 2. I’d determined that I needed to get through 4-5 chapters each week to be finished with Draft 2 by mid-April. Well, Monday alone I got through 4.5 chapters. And yesterday I worked through 2 more. I’ll be using the Friday co-working time with TEP3 to do even more. I guess I need to reevaluate my timeline. Maybe I’ll be moving that up.

I’m working on using the words “my book” and “when I publish” in an effort to quiet the inner critic. Not only is my TEP3 project about getting my book finished, but it’s also about allowing myself to be seen.