How long have you been writing?
I have been writing my whole life—over 50 years. The first piece that I ever wrote and sent to a Hip Hop Magazine was published. I wrote an opinion column about Tupac Shakur’s death. The publisher wrote me a note that said: “Writing is your sword. You will never win at life until you use the sword that God gave you to fight with.” I started writing articles for magazines. I made quite a bit of money to supplement my income. I also received a fair amount of rejection—but I quickly learned that I was submitting my work to the wrong audience. Several magazines noted on their rejection slip that my writing style was too risqué.
What advice would you give a new writer just starting out?
I think there are two styles of writers. You will be one, the other, or a combination of both throughout your lifetime. The secret to never giving up on your craft is to know which mode of writing style your soul is in. Journalists, copy editors, and researchers describe the world the way it is. When you are collecting data and facts, or telling a story that already exists you need to be disciplined, curious, and detailed oriented. You don’t need to have a lot of life experiences—you just need to love writing. Get started now.
Fiction writers whether you are writing a movie script, video game, novel, or TV show you are writing something that doesn’t exist so you need to be in “the zone.” The zone requires certain life experiences because you are co-creating with the universe. You are not reporting what is—you are using your imagination to create what might be, what could have been; and what could be already happening in a another galaxy on another dimension. You have to be open to the possibilities— you must be open to the weird and the wonderful. The stories choose you because your current skillset, life experiences, and psychological software match the basic structure that will bring the story into human existence.
If you are writing a memoir, poetry, opinion columns, or self-help type books and articles you are using both fiction and non-fiction skills. In order to help someone else you must be able to expand your story, your truth, and your life experiences to a broader audience. To me, it’s almost like giving advice to your future self or your younger self. You are reporting and applying what has actually happened to help someone in the future. You should have acquired a certain level of self-awareness and accountability at this stage of writing.
If you have writer’s block or you feel stuck as a writer ask yourself what could be possibly missing in your life that is preventing you from finding or producing the right words. I don’t think it is wise to tell someone else how to leave an unhappy marriage if you have not yet acquired the courage to leave your own unhappy marriage—or if you have never experience what it feels like to married. Or maybe you could write a fiction story about a woman who had the courage to leave an unhappy relationship—but it may be difficult to cultivate the juicy details and write about the psychological choices and emotions of a woman of this magnitude if you have not yet experienced these emotions first hand.
On the other hand, you could do research about women who left unhappy relationships. You could outline the major events in their life; you could categorize the women by various time periods, cultures, whether or not they worked outside of the home or whether or not their parents were married or divorced. You could even organize the women based on their zodiac signs or the Feng Shui arrangement of their homes. This is the first type of writer. This type of writing fuels your soul’s ink well. It gives you fresh ideas. If you are stuck sometimes, you should write about what already exists.
When your soul is full, rich, and achy from an abundance of life experiences—you have so much to say and you don’t know where to start—start writing poetry, songs, and short stories, articles—this will open you up for longer and more in-depth fiction or non-fiction pieces.
Writing is your soul’s journey of self-discovery, self-expression, and co-creating with the universe.
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BLURB:
Jungle Beauty Goddesses “Pretty Blue” Book 1
If you were given planet Earth as a gift to develop its life forms—would the world be a better place than it is today? What would your primary expectation and goal be for each human? Would you give them free will or plan their destiny? Would you demand that your humans worship you as their creator? Would you be available to assuage their every desire; and acquiesce to their demands, prayers, and wishes? Would you grow to resent them for living the life you imagined?
The Jungle Beauty Goddesses were free-spirited goddesses who enjoyed their freedom as the youngest children—and the last deities born to their parents—creators of the universe. Per the family tradition of being awarded a planet, the septuplets were given planet Earth as a gift for their birthday. Their siblings, also gods and goddesses of the universe since the beginning of time, warn them about the challenges of selflessness, power, worship, and divine duty.
The seven sisters struggle to maintain their own freedom as limitless beings, while sibling rivalry makes it difficult to accept their collective duty to fulfill the family obligation to the deity-hood as creators for planets.
The entire universe threatens to collapse due to their negligence and disobedience. They question the boundaries of their divine powers as they ponder whether it is possible to mold a being to be superior to its creator.
Jungle Beauty Goddesses “Aquatic Ball” Book 2
Sometimes your worst nightmare is having everything you ever wanted. Upon visiting planet Earth, the Jungle Beauty Goddesses discover that the life forms they created are in danger of extinction, and an unforeseen dominant species has positioned itself to take dominion.
Unprepared and disillusioned about how to access their highest vibrational frequency; the Jungle Beauty Goddesses face their own demise.
The only way they can save themselves, their planet, and ultimately the universe is by managing to align with their deity powers and the wisdom of their highest selves in the face of their worst fears, disappointments, and betrayals.
Jungle Beauty Goddesses “Dirty Ball” Book 3
If you had the power to make anyone in the world fall in love with you—would you? Jungle Beauty Goddess Afar revokes her deity vows and takes her destiny into her own hands by participating in the life she was born to create for others.
Afar embraces the deepest, darkest nuances of her shadow self with brutality, dignity, and integrity. She brazenly unleashes the murkiest qualities of the human condition and leaves the chaos for her unsuspecting sisters to clean up or suffer the consequences of losing the planet given to them by their parents–creators of the universe.
Jungle Beauty Goddess Afar’s actions give a new meaning to the saying, “Hell has no fury like a woman scorned.”
Available from: Amazon UK | Amazon US
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Excerpt:
More human males had begun to tell stories to sailors, pirates, and fishermen on how to capture Mermaids for sex, but they would tell their wives and girlfriends that they were going on long fishing and exploration trips. Human males were really scouring the oceans and seas in search of sexual favors by hapless mermaids.
One night three large ships of human males surrounded seven mermaids and captured them with their large fishing nets. Humans had not yet developed mobile lights for their boats, so they depended heavily on the moon’s light for travel across the oceans and seas at night. The unclad Mermaids were tangled in the fishing nets fighting and screaming ferociously to free themselves while the human males laughed, joked, and made derogatory catcalls about the size of their breasts. On this particular night, the full bright moon, turned completely black, in an instance. The pitch-black night hid the mermaids from the sailors’ view and they were able to safely swim back into the deep waters.
After that night, the Mermaids developed a relationship with the moon man. He advised the mermaids of the best times to travel above water and numerous other ways to protect themselves from human males. The ceremony tonight is the monthly ritual that we dedicate to the moon for saving our lives.”
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Cassandra George Sturges is the author of “A Woman’s Soul on Paper,” “Success & Beauty is an Attitude,” “The Illusion of Beauty: Why Women Hate Themselves & Envy Other Women,” and “Why Racism is a Mental Illness.” For many years, she was an advice columnist for Today’s Black Woman Magazine and is currently a full-time psychology and sociology professor at a college in the mid-west. She is a high school dropout who graduated with her General Education Diploma and eventually earned five college degrees including two masters and a doctorate degree. In her late forties, she began making life-size fabric sculpture, cloth dolls that turned out to be the main characters in her Jungle Beauty Goddesses coming of age, modern creation Nubian Mythology fantasy fiction, sensuous, romantic series. She is the mother of two adult children, a grandmother, and for over 20-years has shared her life with her twin flame.
Cassandra George Sturges Social Media Links
https://www.facebook.com/Authentikbeauty
https://www.authentikbeautymagazine.com/c-g-sturges-bio
https://twitter.com/georgesturges
https://www.instagram.com/cassandrasturges/
http://junglebeautygoddess.blogspot.com/
https://www.youtube.com/user/AuthentikBeautyBlogs
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GIVEAWAY!
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