Someone asked me on Quora how she (somehow I'm pretty sure it was a she) could tell whether she was descended from "angels, elementals, or starseed." 

Here's my answer.

Sorry to bust your chops, but I know these discussions all too well from when I lived in Sedona and was part of the huge New Age community there. But even then, the talk would get on my nerves.
In my not-so-humble opinion, tracing back your “heritage” to angels, elementals, or aliens is just a bunch of New Age woo-woo designed to make you feel special.
Once you “find out” via past-life regression or a psychic or channeler who engages in that kind of BS (and yes, if you pay people like that, they will happily tell you anything you want to hear), then you can loudly proclaim that you, Joanne Sixpack, are actually the love child of Lord Jesus Sananda from the 3rd planet from the left and leader of the Galactic Federation, and the Archangel Myriel, his celestial soulmate.
In my time in Sedona, I met at least five women who were Joan of Arc in a past life. Amazingly, no one ever came out of a regression or psychic reading saying they were a lowly peasant woman who didn’t do anything remarkable in her life. Gee, I wonder why.
Don’t get me wrong: I do believe in reincarnation, and not all psychics are frauds. I even worked as a professional Tarot reader for a while back in the day.
But I also know that there are tons of charlatans and frauds out there who are preying on gullible New Age disciples who are desperate to be “special.”
Claiming to be a descendant of angels, aliens, or fairies just serves to create an artificially inflated ego and a sense of entitlement based on nothing.
We already have too many people who demand special treatment and respect without bothering to earn any of it… there’s no need to make more of them.
Here’s an alternative: Instead of falling for this crap, just realize that you have been given this life to make something special out of it and yourself. It’s completely up to you.
I hope you seize each day and aim to do something special—whether that’s inspiring others through art or music… being a role model due to your winning personality and charisma… raising your kids to be wonderful adults… making someone’s day through random acts of kindness… or simply aspiring to become the best version of yourself that you can be.
A lot more boring than being a star child, I know, but ultimately a lot more fulfilling. 

I was recently asked on Quora whether anyone ever changed their appearance with the Law of Attraction. 

My answer: I did. 

When I was in my twenties, I lost 25 lbs. with the help of manifestation techniques… and in the process developed a self-esteem that I hadn’t had previously, even before I started shedding pounds.
Here’s how I did it and how you can too:

• Leave Post-Its for yourself all over the house, but most importantly on the bathroom mirror.
• At least twice a day, stand in front of the mirror and look yourself straight in the eyes. That alone weirds many people out, because while we look in the mirror for combing our hair, brushing our teeth, or checking up on our makeup/clothes, we rarely if ever look ourselves deeply in the eyes. Do it anyway—gaze into your own eyes like you would look at someone you love.
• As you do this, say the following: “I love myself unconditionally. I accept myself unconditionally. I am kind to myself.” This freaks out even more people because we’ve been trained not to love ourselves, but to be critical about our own appearance, character, and so forth, perpetually. However, to become more beautiful/handsome, you need to love yourself. These three sentences are absolutely essential. Later on, once they’ve completely sunk in, you can add more, like, “I like to eat food that’s good for me. I am trim and healthy.” And so on. But don’t overload on affirmations; keep it simple and easy to memorize.
• Every morning when you’re still in that half-asleep/half-awake state, and every night before falling asleep, do a short visualization. Imagine you’re lying in a small row boat floating down a gentle river. The waves softly rock the boat; it feels like when you were a small child being rocked by your mother.
• The boat slowly drifts toward the shore, where you see a beautiful woman (if you’re a woman; if you’re a man, you’ll see a man) standing and waiting for you. She has a perfectly shaped body and is the epitome of youth, beauty, and health. As the boat drifts closer to her, you see that the woman is you—the ideal you. You get out of the boat and step toward the other you… and then step “into” her and merge with her.
• Now you feel what it’s like to BE in that perfect, healthy body. Feel the slimness of your waist, the suppleness of your skin, the muscles in your arms and thighs. Experience what it feels like to be slender and radiantly healthy and beautiful. Breathe deeply and enjoy this exhilarating sensation. Feel the soft breeze on your youthful skin and hair, feel the warm sun on your face. Really get into the feeling so deeply that your heart feels like bursting from contentment and happiness.
• Then slowly come back to reality.
• Do this for at least 21 days in a row. If you miss one day, the 21 days start over. One of the absolutely miraculous things that will happen is that—long before you start shedding the pounds, and you will—your entire personality will change, simply because of the intense feeling of well-being you’ll experience. I felt better about myself than ever before, even though I hadn’t lost any weight yet, and I had people (men and women) come up to me and tell me that I was one of the most radiant, sensual women they’d ever seen. Pretty darn amazing.

So try it for yourself. You’ll be absolutely amazed about the results. Keep in mind, though, that the visualization part has to be done with a great deal of emotion and involving all five senses to make the experience as real as possible.

First off, let's make it clear that I'm all for not taking someone else's religious traditions and cultural treasures, and perverting them, and then claiming it's the real thing. However, this political-correctness wave is getting so excessive that it now infringes on the human right to creative expression.

Three years ago, one of my writer friends and I participated in a themed short-story contest by a small publisher of adult and YA fiction. 

The theme was world mythology, and the contest ran over four weeks. Each week had a different theme: one week stories should be based on European mythology, the next on Asian mythology, and so forth. 

One of my short stories (based on the Russian tale of Baba Yaga) and two of my friend's won in the contest and were picked for inclusion in an anthology. 

Not only did the publishers take their sweet time to publish the anthology (they dragged out the process over three years, and it was finally going to be released this month)...

...yesterday all contest winners got an email saying that the publisher decided not to publish the anthology at all, because “the growing awareness of inherently problematic plots and cultural appropriation caused us to realize that we had mistakenly created a contest and anthology that, while well-meant, has the potential to harm readers of the cultures represented."

When is this madness going to end?

This is outrageous. There are countless middle-grade and young-adult novels that are (more or less loosely) based on fairytales and mythology.

Should we take the Percy Jackson series and movie off the market? I’m pretty sure that author Rick Riordan isn’t Greek. 

Should we prohibit everyone who isn’t German from basing their stories on a Bros. Grimm fairytale? 

That means all the movies (Disney and otherwise) of Snow White, Cinderella, etc. should be taken off the market. And The Little Mermaid is Danish, by the way, so that should go too. 

The entire concept of fairies is very much associated with Celtic folklore, so if you're not Irish, you have no business writing books featuring fairies, elves, leprechauns, and the likes.

To Kill a Mockingbird should never have been written, because what does a white woman know about the plight of a black person accused of a crime he didn't commit?

Without cultural appropriation, creativity in literature, music, and fine art will be a thing of the past. We'll be only allowed to act within the narrow confines of the neat little boxes the SJWs want to stuff us into.

Rock’n Roll wouldn’t exist without cultural appropriation. Elvis would never have gone anywhere without cultural appropriation. 

Should white people be prohibited from playing blues music? 

Should a black person be prohibited from singing a Sinatra song? 

Should Eminem go to jail for rapping? 

On that note: Should karaoke be forbidden once and for all? You might sing a song that is not part of your own culture. 

Should school bands introduce segregation again, so that each ethnic group will only play "their own" songs?

While we're at it, please cancel all Zumba classes that aren't led by Colombians and all yoga classes with non-Indian teachers. I will make sure to take my son out of his karate class, which is unscrupulously run by a non-Asian. 

Also, I shall call a school meeting to demand that all the foreign-language teachers are natives of the respective languages they teach. 

This is complete insanity, and I will never say that it’s OK. Let's hear it for cultural appropriation!

“Saturated” might be the proper word for how it feels after you’ve attended the annual WIFYR conference in beautiful Sandy, Utah (pronounced Wee-fur, short for Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers). 

​It’s not in the Writer’s Digest or the Guide to Literary Agents, which also lists all the major conferences in the US. Nobody I know—even the true conference addicts—has ever heard of WIFYR, though it is anything but new.

​For the last eighteen years, this one-of-a-kind conference for children’s book writers has been lovingly organized and hosted by Carol Lynch Williams, an award-winning YA author with thirty books under her belt.
 
WIFYR is a building-block workshop/conference that lets attendees choose their own experience—from a full-on, five-day intensive to single-day workshops and afternoon lectures, from topic-centered classes to a full-novel workshop and a writing boot camp.

The first morning before class, I go downstairs for an early breakfast at the Best Western where I’m staying. The breakfast room is completely deserted, except for a middle-aged, balding man who comes in and sits down at the one-person table right next to me.
 
He wears a white dress shirt, black pants, a formal black vest, and a black bow tie—obviously one of the waiters on his break. I ignore him and watch a CNN news report on Trump being investigated on his alleged Russia relations.
 
When I arrive at the Waterford School, the private school that houses the annual WIFYR conference, I pick up my name tag and info and enter the auditorium for the first session of the week—the traditional greeting with announcements.
 
Right away, I realize three things:
 
1. WIFYR is tiny. There are only about 130–150 people in the auditorium, which will make for a very intimate conference experience. The faculty-to-attendee ratio seems to be around 1:10.
 
2. WIFYR is very homogenous. I don’t see any black or Asian faces; it looks like everyone is white and Mormon, and 90% of the attendees are female.

3. I’m an idiot. I spot the waiter I saw at the hotel at the front of the auditorium, in a lineup of faculty members. Frantic scrolling through my mobile welcome package reveals that he’s super-agent Stephen Fraser from the Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency.

I also realize I sit straight in his line of view and that he must have noticed me when I came in. “Mortified” is too small a word for how I’m feeling right now.
 
“Just let it go,” says my old WIFYR friend Heather, who sits next to me, but my OCD prevents me from doing so. Finally, I get up and take the walk of shame to Stephen Fraser, profusely apologizing for my earlier behavior.
 
He smiles and nods while the other faculty members give me unreadable stares, which makes me realize that I just rudely interrupted their amicable chatting. I blush even more, if that’s possible, and slink back to my seat in the third row.
 
Coming all the way from Vermont and having endured a grueling twelve-hour journey to get here (I stupidly decided to save some money by allowing for two stopovers), I have opted for the full experience. It includes a daily morning workshop facilitated by a published author, agent, or editor—four hours every day, twenty hours a week, in small groups of ten to fourteen. 

My teacher is Janette Rallison, author of the Fairy Godmother series, whom I instantly recognize as a kindred spirit… blunt, spunky, a woman of few secrets.
 
Morning workshops are a tour de force of kid-lit writing, a mini MFA, with as much information crammed into five days as possible. The thirteen women and one guy who make up my class sweat trying to keep up on the rapid-fire tips on plotting, structure, and character development.
 
Ahead of the conference, we all submitted the first twenty pages of our novels to Janette’s assistant Rachel, to be critiqued by the teacher and our peers. I learn a lot reviewing 260 pages of unpublished manuscripts—stories that range from historical fiction (the dangers of coal mining in the 1920s) to epic fantasy (faerie worlds populated by dragons, wizards, and reluctant heroines). And, of course, I get a lot of different viewpoints on my own manuscript.
 
The afternoons are filled with three one-hour lectures, some in the auditorium, others in the various classrooms. Here are some of the highlights from the week:

Lisa Mangum, managing editor of Shadow Mountain Publishing, discusses the intricacies of scene and sequel. She demonstrates perfect pacing and structure on the pilot episode of Supernatural.
 
I blame her personally for getting me hooked on the series… that night, instead of writing in my hotel room, I watch three Supernatural episodes on my laptop (and another three the next night).
 
Stephen Fraser talks about the need for privacy. While he acknowledges the need for an “author platform,” he also thinks that we are all way too distracted these days.
 
“We tell everyone what’s going on with us and leave nothing to ourselves,” he says and recommends to take some time every day to sit quietly and just be with our thoughts.
 
Stephen warns that once we’re with a publisher, they will want to brand us, turn us into a franchise. In other words, once we’ve written that one successful YA steampunk novel, that’s what they want us to write forever. 

“I’m here to protect you from that,” he says, which makes me want to kiss him. “A writer’s creativity shouldn’t be stifled by forcing them to write only one thing. If you feel compelled to write in different genres, then it’s my job as an agent to help you sell those stories.”
 
Take that, you branding agents who-shall-not-be-named. I feel vindicated about my eclectic tastes and writing interests.

Ben Grange, a young agent with L. Perkins who’s also an author, does a refreshing presentation that questions some truisms about writing. He disagrees with the old saw that you should “write what you know.” Instead, he encourages us to go ahead and write what we don’t know, learning new things by putting ourselves into other people’s shoes.
 
Ben also doesn’t believe in writer’s block: “Writer’s block means either you haven’t asked the right questions, or you haven’t found the right answers.”
 
He says writers shouldn’t be afraid to write a shitty first draft (SFD, a phrase coined by Ann Lamott) or even a shitty first novel, “because shit is often used as a fertilizer.” He himself had to write nine crappy novels before one was good enough to publish.
 
That’s comforting, though if I were to write nine crappy novels before getting an agent, I’d be sixty-five by the time one got published… so maybe not.
 
Aside from the many great lectures over the five days that go by way too fast, we also get some excitement: rumor has it that Stephen Fraser has tapped one of the attendees to sign with him.
 
Using my Spidey sense, I figure out that it must be C., a woman in my class who wrote a riveting story about a Chinese fisherman’s son in the late 1800s. No surprise there—her writing style is sublime, a mix of The Kite Runner and The Life of Pi. I’m really happy for her; it shows that miracles can indeed happen.

The five-day marathon ends with a keynote speech from award-winning YA author Julie Berry, who is giving a 45-minute pep talk for writers that is nothing short of hilarious.
 
Julie is convinced that what keeps many of us from writing consistently is the feeling that we have to write well. Forget about that, she says: “You don’t need to punish yourself if you don’t feel like writing well. You can always write badly.”
 
Feeling that we have to write well constipates our creativity, she insists. “Don’t worry about writing badly. There are fifty shades of awful writing, and a market for it too. Just keep lowering that bar, baby.” After all, she says, “So what if you’re a mediocre writer? The world is full of mediocre readers!”
 
Worrying about writing is not writing, so get over your fear. Don’t stall by organizing the fridge or doing the laundry. Sit down and write. Because, if you “do the work instead of diddling the time away, it makes it easier to face the fear the next day.”
 
And so ends another fabulous WIFYR experience. I’ll grab my bag and say goodbye to old and new friends, promising we’ll keep in touch. So long, guys, I’ll be back for the boot camp.

Dear Auntie S.,
 
I’m the president of the United States. No really, I am. Problem is, no one believes it—and it’s all the fault of the Russians, WikiLeaks, and Lord Jesus Sananda, the evil leader of the Galactic Federation. How can I claim my predestined place in the universe? Please help!
 
Anonymous
 
***
 
Dear Anonymous,
 
Look, despite what we tell our children, not everyone can be president of the United States. It’s a white lie, like “Santa Claus exists” or “Of course Daddy is your real father.” There have to be winners and losers, and if you’re the latter, it’s important not to add a “sore” to it.
 
Don’t worry, there is a place for you in the universe, dear, if only as a bad example for what corruption, greed, and delusions of grandeur can do to a woman. I’d suggest you pop some happy pills, stop playing the blame game, and find something worthwhile to do with your life. Cook something for your husband, maybe. You could even try to treat the people who work for you like human beings; I heard it can be rewarding.
 
Be well,
Auntie S.