Daphneleah Schneider is a Rightness Release Mentor, Speaker, Reiki Master, Writer, and Model from Los Angeles, California, where she is creating specialized talks and workshops focused on wellness and healing from Rightness.

Can you describe the moment or reasoning, leading up to deciding to write about abandoning/healing the need to be “right”?

(DS): Before I realized what exactly this book was going to be about, I started writing about some aspects of the origin of humans. I wrote extensively on several topics, and then I realized the work needed to be divided. One division led to sharing my personal journey of healing. I have done a tremendous amount of work to heal from Rightness, and listen to others, and have compassion. The book came about because I wanted to share my experience.

What would you say is your favorite part of writing your book, “Releasing Rightness: How Love Heals the Need to be Right”

(DS): I love the magic of it. I love how sometimes the worst words are written, and a good idea is there; with work and effort, the words transform into something good that makes sense.

I love clarifying my thoughts, which then helps me clarify my life beliefs. I love the honesty of it all. I love how good it feels to express myself creatively.

Your blog mentions your emphasis on divinity in your life.  Does the concept of divinity inspire your writing as well? If so, how?

(DS): In my world, a cigar is never just a cigar; all things are divine. Everything in the universe is the divine, which I experience as love. Some things have a higher love frequency than others, but it’s all love. Creativity is divinely inspired. From coloring to creating a masterpiece, it’s all the divine expressing itself through us. Each one of us is divinity incarnate and a form of love. Some people are better at living it than others. And that is part of the human experience. 

The divine inspires my writing in that it moves through me when I write. Even though my writing has a childlike quality to it, the value of the information and my experience help others. Living connected with Divinity is ultimately how I healed from Rightness. The Divine is love and the most potent force. It heals us and connects us to all things.

Could you please walk us through your writing process?

(DS): I ask for help and guidance from the muses and the divine before I begin. I use a timer and work for 15 minutes at a time, or I set the alarm for an hour and work for that duration. 

I usually type and type and then go back and edit. I can write for 2-4 hours a day.

When I have something, I send it to an editor ( a dear friend or my daughter) to help it make sense and give me direction. 

What piece of advice would you offer to women authors?

(DS): Do it! Your story is valuable, and we want it and need it. If you have an idea for a book, it means the idea seeks to live outside of your mind. It needs to be in the world. Others have asked for it, and you heard the call. Take all the time you need and do it. I started with fifteen minutes a day. It was grueling at first. I felt a great deal of shame taking that much time for myself, but I persevered, and it eventually became easier. Now, I consider myself a writer.

Writing daily makes you a writer. You can do it! 

Much of Daphneleah’s time is currently dedicated to completing her first nonfiction book.  A tale declaring how being wrong saved her life. This account of Rightness chronicles how she left the drama behind and entered the world of good living. She shares her loves and joys along with the pain she experienced in her life journey that allowed her to  awaken and love herself and others. She shares how science and love correlate and how we grow by availing ourselves to both. (via https://www.daphneleah.com/)

I write. I always excelled at writing. In a different version of my life, I stayed in the challenging school system where I started, was pushed to excel, and found a mentor who guided me into a writing career before I graduated. You already know my name.

In this version of my life, I spent the last three years of high school in a small town school where the guidance counselor apologized because they didn’t have a decent English teacher. I was fifteen and thought she was weird. I had fun and life took an entirely different path with many moves, careers, and relationships. Life’s been interesting – and it’s all material.

In 2005 I was paid to revise a screenplay. In 2007 I self-published my first novel and I’ve been editing and helping others self-publish since 2013. My short stories, novels, and screenplays have been finalists or honorable mentions in Kindle Book Awards, Emerging Screenwriters, Sacramento International Film Festival, Amazon Breakout Novel Awards, Writer’s Digest International Self-Publishing Book Awards, Writer’s Digest Short Story Writing Competition, and the Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. An art book I edited and designed was runner up in the San Francisco Book Festival Photography/Art category.

With the book I’ve just launched, I’m focusing on doing a better, more sustained effort at marketing. That has included figuring out the unifying factors in my novels: They’re stories with strong, propulsive plots and engaging characters – with substance to fuel conversation.

What inspires your writing themes (either as a whole or for each book)?

(SM): While writing a gripping story with characters that stay with you is the structure, I do slide in themes that fuel conversation, too. The inspiration always comes from real life one way or another, and resilience is always a factor. My family and I have had a variety of experiences; I’ve worked with at-risk adults, children, and teens in different ways; and people talk to me. I’ve had a stranger give me their life story in a fifteen-minute bus ride. 

All for One: Love, War, & Ghosts – the first draft was completed in 1981, when Vietnam vets were experiencing a lot of problems and a lack of support. I didn’t recognize a positive rejection from an NYC agent as encouragement to work on it. When I got back to it decades later, I wanted to check on some details – and had trouble finding any Vietnam vets who wanted to talk. Knowing the problems didn’t just go away with time made me decide to have my characters age before the scary stuff begins. 

Running Away: Maggie’s Story – when I got my first check for writing in 2005 and decided to take writing seriously, her issues were more pressing. I’d worked with many girls who’d been molested but either didn’t think anyone would believe them or they’d misbehaved in anger so much that no one would believe them. The story is told in her voice and her mother’s to show how communication got broken and mends. 

Peg’s Story: Detours is her mother’s story. Readers asked for it because the mom mentioned she’d run away at the same age and her parents thought she was dead for ten years. I did some meandering in my twenties and thought her story would be like that, until the character took over at the bus station and shocked me. I put it away, embarrassed that someone might think it was about me. Then I saw an interview program with women who were putting their lives together after being trafficked, and I realized that was her story. 

Tough Times started life as Michael Dolan McCarthy, which was a terrible title for a book geared for teenage boys. Michael’s just a regular kid whose life falls apart one piece at a time, but he toughs it out and takes responsibility for his young white siblings – the kind of character my “tough” students would understand. Making race the reason they’ve never met his mom’s parents was just one more layer and brings in family communication issues again.

Alice is a quite short novel. A group in Vancouver puts on a 3-Day Novel Contest every year. I entered the weekend with an idea of a situation with the bank, because that sort of thing was common at that point, and the three main characters in mind. Once Jack, Alice’s father, showed up, the two of them started dictating the dialogue in the voices of Helen Hunt and Jeff Bridges. They had me laughing out loud and the initial draft was done by the end of the weekend. Sometimes the characters take over in a fun way. Yet it’s been described as a modern day ethics story.

What was your favorite part of writing All for One: Love, War & Ghosts?

(SM): That’s tough. I enjoy the whole process, even revisions on revisions, braiding the plots together. And the little bits where character show through – like when the bad guy flashes on a moment from his teen years. But overall? It’s a bit mean spirited, but I may have gotten the most satisfaction out of the gossip’s faint.

How would you compare your screenwriting process versus books?

(SM): I tend to be very sparing in my description when I’m writing books – I usually stick to details that are essential to understand something else. That makes converting one of my books into the screenplay relatively easy. You give the essential description before the dialogue and let the producer and director add the rest. In both cases, the characters and the story have got to work.

Your educational background covers a wide array of writing capabilities, from research and grant proposals to fiction and nonfiction. Which would you say is your preferred writing vice and why?

(SM): There is great satisfaction when a non-fiction project makes a substantial difference in lives. However, I’ve been making up stories since I was a little kid, so storytelling is me having fun. I grew up in a house full of adults – I was the oops seven years younger than the after-thought who was seven years younger than the family. The after thought’s train was set up in the attic. I was not allowed to run it, but he trusted me to play with all the little people and buildings. And that’s just one example. My mom and I made up my bedtime stories, I helped write our class plays in elementary school, and I researched my first novel the summer I turned ten…

What piece of advice would you give to women aspiring to become authors?

(SM): Love the process – write, share, revise, repeat. If you love the process, you will produce your best work. If you love the process, success doesn’t hinge on numbers.

Sheri McGuinn is an award-winning writer of fiction with strong, propulsive plots and engaging characters that provide substance to fuel conversation. With Master’s degrees in Education and Professional Writing, she also writes and edits for hire and helps people through the self-publishing process.