Flipping a coin to decide where you’re going to live for the next two years of your life is probably not a smart choice. Which is probably why I got lucky that the results were as follows:
I did end up making a choice though. Not that night but the next.
Truth is… I already knew where I wanted to go.
It was the same place I was headed, decided by someone else. Some guy said because you’re major in Creative Writing you have to go Here and I just nodded along. But I needed it to be my choice.
I simply never had that discussion with myself. It happens more often than not that we only ever debate things not to make our minds up but to allow ourselves to follow our hearts and know it.
Unless our subconcious already has its plans, we wouldn’t bother discussing it in the first place.
And I think that is finally the way I solve my writer’s block.
You know, it’s funny – “Writer’s Block” can be interpreted two ways. A block for a writer or a block created by a writer. More often than not, in life and in writing, despiting knowing exactly what we want, we fight it.
One of the current novels I’m working on is going one way but I want it to go another. Like really, really want it to go another. But I can’t hold on too strong to the movie I have playing in my head. I mean I could. But do I want to? Do I really want to? I don’t want it to follow the formula set by precedent or the notion that it has to be extraordinary.
It must be real. That’s all. It must be what my heart seeks. Honest, vulnerable, unadulterated. Without giving a damn about what others will think. Because I don’t write for others. I write for myself. That is the one thing I can count on to remain my own.
But what if part of writing a truth, a life, means relinquishing authority over the characters? I’m having trouble with this particular novel because I know what must happen to prove a point I’m trying to prove. But what if it’s meant to prove something else?
I was told a while back by someone close to me that I’m a Type A person. True. I am a control freak. I like knowing what I’m doing. I like having the authority to decide what’s next for me and for my work.
But I’m realizing letting go of what we want and letting life go as it wants is also a decision that can be made. In writing and in life.
