How One Guided-Imagery Session Saved My Book

By Lisa Smith Molinari
Stars and Stripes columnist, author of The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com (2020), and former NSNC President

I arrived at Suzette’s summer house in Cape Cod believing that I was there to sample her famous gourmet cuisine and chat. The fact that she was leading a guided-imagery session that day with four other writers was completely incidental. 

Besides, I didn’t really believe in all that meditation hocus-pocus. Transcendental this and that, colored chakras, ancient wisdom…hooey. But hey, to each her own, right? I’d fake my way through it for the chance to catch up with my columnist crony any day. 

Before her paying customers arrived, I chatted with my friend in her open kitchen, watching her deftly prepare the elements of what would surely be a fabulous lunch. We had met during the NSNC conference in Macon, Georgia, back in 2012. I was a wide-eyed newcomer, totally in awe of Suzette Martinez Standring, author of The Art of Column Writing, which I’d read from cover to cover several times. 

Like a groupie at a rock concert, I followed her around, making awkward eye contact in hopes that she’d take pity on me. Finally, one night in the hospitality suite, we struck up a real conversation. It took a while, but at some point, I stopped being Suzette’s stalker and became her friend. Years later, while we both served on the board, our friendship progressed to the “lifelong” category. So when she asked me to come to her guided-imagery writer’s retreat, I didn’t hesitate. 

Right on time, her guests arrived. We all introduced ourselves, and chatted casually under a shaded table on the outdoor patio. I didn’t tell anyone that I wasn’t a true believer. “Why spoil their fun,” I thought in my infinite wisdom. 

While we all took turns talking about our writing projects, Suzette breezed in and out of the patio doors with glasses of iced tea, freshly made hummus with pita, and an elegant salad with grilled chicken. When it was my turn, I told them about the book I was writing, an honest but humorous memoir about my life as a military wife and mother of three. My manuscript delivery date was fast approaching, but I was missing the crucial final chapter. Failed attempts to write it had been either cliché or insincere. I needed something that would tie it all together in an authentic and meaningful way. I was stuck.

When lunch had ended, we retired to the cozy living room to begin the guided imagery. With my belly full of hummus, I feared what might happen once we closed our eyes. Never having done any kind of meditation before, I thought Suzette might hypnotize me into some kind of embarrassing stage act, or I might just fall asleep. Either way, I wouldn’t remember anything when she woke us up, so why not just relax and enjoy it?

Soon, our lids were closed and we were breathing deeply, which I had expected. But then, Suzette asked us to evoke places, experience feelings, and reconstitute memories, which I had not expected. Rather than getting sleepy, I found myself fully conscious, concentrating deeply on singular visualizations I’d conjured with Suzette’s guidance. I was amazed at the amount of detail my mind produced when all other stimuli were blocked out. 

Suzette did not snap her fingers to wake us up when meditation was over. She guided us methodically back through the steps to where we started, so that we could remember every detail of the experience. Then, Suzette led us to her rustic dining table where she’d placed composition notebooks and pens. She asked us to write down what had visualized during the session. 

Normally, when I write, it takes me at least an hour to form the first sentence. While I wait for inspiration, I surf cat videos on YouTube, put frivolous items in my Amazon shopping cart, file my nails, and forage for snacks. 

But at Suzette’s dining room table, my pen hit the paper in a flurry of run-on sentences and paragraph-length descriptions that would make John Updike proud. I dumped the entire contents of my mind, which was loaded to the brim with the repressed and forgotten details of a day at the beach when I was three. 

As I scribbled descriptions and long-forgotten emotions attached to the scene, a 100-watt incandescent bulb ignited in a blinding flash of inspiration… Okay, that was dramatic. But in all seriousness, a brilliant realization materialized right there in that composition book. 

This is it … my final chapter. 

The scene of me at the beach at age three had been one of my parents’ favorite 8mm home movies. Many times, we’d watch me mouth the words, “It won’t hurt you, Mommy!” while pointing to the wide ocean. Then, we’d all laugh at the irony of the wave that knocks me over. Other than amusement, I had gleaned nothing from it prior to that day at Suzette’s.

But through guided imagery, I realized that the scene had foreshadowed how I would later process the world around me. It was a metaphor for my experiences as a goofy middle-schooler, class clown in high school, insecure young adult, overwhelmed military spouse, harried mom, and developing columnist.

A week later, my manuscript was finished. The final chapter was not just an ending, it was the keystone that made it all work. My book, The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com, was published May 1, 2020, and has been described as “a lively and resonant memoir…capturing the service of motherhood with candor, humor, and grace.” ~ Kirkus Reviews.

On October 17, from 10:00 to 11:00 am, Suzette is leading the NSNC Webinar “Guided Imagery to Enhance the Writing Process.” Register here. I still don’t believe in hocus-pocus, but I do believe that Suzette’s guided meditation session will inspire your creativity.