Hi. If this is your first visit to Write.Your website, let me personally greet you. My name is Noa Stirling and I’m the founder and director of Write.Your. This is actually my dream come true calling myself a “founder” of something. Yeah, as a bookworm, an introvert and a person that prefers the calming and inspiring space of pinterest and goodreads rather than instagram’s buzzing influencers, I feel weird carrying this title.
I’m a writer myself, a journalist in my past, an entrepreneur and a lecturer about writing and creativity. I am a writing coach and a creativity coach. I’m a mother of two creative but noisy girls and the life-partner of my English Geeky knight.
Write.Your, for me, is a space to bring everything I’m about into one creative space. And the mission is clear: I want to help other creatives use writing as a tool for self-reflection and exploration, creative brainstorming and clarity. I want to help others see that writing is the most easy-going tool for personal and professional development.
A little woman and a roaring teen at the same time
At the age of 12, I received a hefty book from my mother, “Little Women” by Louisa May Alcott – that’s what was written on the red cover. It had an “old people smell” and it felt heavy and serious. I sat down on the 90’s floral-upholstered wooden chair in my parent’s living room, opened it hesitantly, and began to read.
I felt so proud of myself when I finished the 600 pages of the book. I set it aside, but I realized there was something deeper here – a sense of falling in love. With what? With stories and words and how it all becomes this movie in my head.
I left the book behind and moved to the next one. And to the next. And one day, instead of reading another page in someone’s book, I took one of my empty school notebooks and started writing about my day, telling it like a story or a movie script. Then, I added my feelings. I told the notebook how I felt in one situation and then the next. The notebook always listened.
As a teen feeling unloved, uncared for and uncomfortable with people, places, feelings and everything else that is in this world, that was mind-blowing.
That moment when I opened the notebook symbolized the first of many stops where words would turn into life lessons, and life lessons would turn into words.
I would learn more and more about writing and how it feels to write your feelings down without no one watching. I would take courses and classes and workshops and whatnot and add to my toolbox, waiting for the right opportunity to initiate, to be someone who engages with words and the ways they can, so effortlessly and surprisingly, heal, guide, and assist us in the various processes we encounter in our lives.
A creative in the making
Another major thing happened to me at the age of 12. I started to be in touch with the world of cultural and creative inspiration. From fashion to music, from indie movies to books that are not suitable for a hipster-teen, from modern art to TV documentaries about creatives around the world. I loved it all.
I discovered how much I love exploring the worlds of creators. During quiet hours in the high school library, where I escaped to during many moments of procrastination from school assignments I struggled to keep up with, I researched autobiographies, artist books, personal poetry collections, and novels “based on personal stories.”
In my early twenties, as I packed my belongings, including the many notebooks I had collected since that first one, I began to explore and learn about writing as a therapeutic and creative tool. Basically, I understood that I can ask myself, through writing, many questions and get the answers while writing without no one watching or telling me their opinions.
I asked many questions along the way: How does writing help me? What does it mean when I feel relief and a sense of healing after I write? How do the answers come to the page like that? From where? What is intuition and gut feeling, and how does it relate to writing? How do I expand and embrace writing more and more as this tool that helps me so much?
Thus, I began my journey with writing, as a tool for healing, creating clarity, growth, and balance in life.
For my eyes only
As a 20 year old, I moved to Tel Aviv, which is the trendiest, urban, modern city in my home-country, Israel. It has been my dream to do so since I started my “diary girl” days. In my small hometown, as beautiful as it was, I felt like I’m not in my natural space. I felt like I needed to give up on a lot of things that were important to me. Tel Aviv was and still is the cultural center, where it all happens.
I moved there to my little rented flat in the center of the city and was so happy. This is where I feel at home, sitting at a cafe in the middle of a buzzing city and being myself, with no one to criticize me. Oh! The joy!
And so, I became a journalist at one of the biggest newspapers in Israel. I wrote about art, culture, music, books and places. About people and their lives. About fashion and food. It was amazing.
My career was on the right path but I didn’t like the ego-wars and the competitions. It wasn’t for me. When I met my partner and we became a family of three, I decided to leave my job and become the content editor in one of the biggest design and art schools.
I love this job as well, but I wanted to be an entrepreneur and do my own thing.
13 year later, as I gained more experience and became a writing coach, lecturer and opened a writing school for business women and added my Creativity Coaching diploma to it all, I decided to go back to what I loved way back when – being creative, living a creative life and using writing to clear my head, process ideas and dreams and plans, and helping others see what a magical thing it is to just write.
Write.Your clarity, write your routines, write your peace of mind, write your stories, write your content.
Happy to be here with my Write.Your team to help you do so.