The Backstory Behind Writing My Book

My book “The Soulful Home Design Guide” became #1 Bestseller on Amazon on the day it was launched. Two and a half weeks later, it is still a Bestseller. I am immensely grateful for all the support and some amazing reviews it received from so many. It felt like I was swimming in the ocean of love.

I wanted to share an inspiration and the backstory behind writing this book.

Why “Soulful Home”?

From start to publishing it was all together a 2.5-year project. The biggest inspirations for writing this book were clients’ results and their success stories over my 20 years of working with people and their homes. It includes my own story too. I remember so many times leaving clients’ homes high on inspiration and joy and thinking on my drive home that it would be really awesome to share all of this great stuff that really works with more people. I knew that someday I would write a book, but I didn’t want to write another feng shui book. There are so many beautiful feng shui books already out there! Besides, my work was much more than just feng shui. With time I was working more and more with emotional and psychological aspects of design and people. It felt like I am tapping into something new.

At the beginning of pandemic, it was very quiet. There was nowhere to go, nobody to meet. I was meditating a lot. In one of my meditations the words “Soulful Home” appeared right in front of me. The words were not just words, but they were part of the luminous light and emanated a sense of joy and peace. Right then I knew what my book would be about. From there the structure of the book started to land.

Far from Being a Writer

The thing is that I was very far from being a writer. I’ve never taken any real English courses or any writing courses. When I immigrated to the United States 28 years ago, I could barely speak English. I was an engineer back then, so writing wasn’t a huge priority. So, my writing really sucked for most of these years. Writing blog articles and even emails was hard. I felt quite inadequate. I always had ideas and it was such hard work to express them in words. But those ideas were tickling me constantly, wanting to be expressed.

When I finally started to write this book, it wasn’t fun! Quickly I discovered that Google was a great help with picking synonyms, but altogether it all seemed overwhelming. I wasn’t sure I would be able to do it, but the thought of not sharing the ideas that could help many people felt even worse.

Connecting with Creative Streams

Suddenly one day after 4 months of frustration I became aware of flashes of clarity and inspiration. It felt like there was a stream of ideas that I could hook into and unpack. Sometimes these states would last for 3-4 hours. I would stay at my desk without getting up. It became immensely satisfying to connect with these streams and “translate” them into words. There was a feeling of riding a beautiful flow of some kind. I was thinking: is this what inspiration means to a writer? Only after I almost finished writing the book, I realized that there was something woven in the fabric of the text. It felt like it held a certain space of joy and care and purpose.

My writing still needs a lot of improvement, but it is getting easier. From people’s responses and book reviews it looks like the essence of the book comes through, people are touched by it, and this is what matters for now.

I am excited and humbled for this new chapter to unfold and see where it takes me.

With love,

Natalia