October 5, 2022
Week 104
Emotional State: Everything’s Going to Be Alright
Choices – The Ones you Make or Don’t make
For the past week, I’ve woken up every morning to having one of two song refrains in my head. The first is, “Everything’s gonna be alright,” from No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley. The other is, “Annie are you okay, you okay, you okay, Annie,” from the remake of Smooth Criminal by Michael Jackson.
I’ve decided, because I can, that it’s my brain telling me to stop stressing out. It’ll all work out – the potential move, packing, setting up the new place, and the book(s) I’m working on. I find it fascinating, though, that my brain is telling me that when at other points in my life, it would’ve just been spinning.
Progress. At last. I’ve finally gotten to the point where my fears are being overcome by my ability to handle life as it is. To manage the unknowable, and to know it’ll work out, even if it doesn’t work out the way I intend it to.
That doesn’t stop me from coming up with options and contingency plans. I have a plethora of those. But I’ve realized that it fits in life as well as in book plotting and writing. If you fight the tide, if you try to force a situation to happen because of your stress, all it gets you is more stress.
Because I can’t predict the future. I can only live in the now and prepare for the future as best I can.
So that’s what I’m doing. Planning, but keeping it loose, so that I can pivot at any one point once I have more information. It also means I can focus on the now and what I can control.
I can’t control my life situation – it’s out of my hands. I can control how quickly I respond to it by doing the research and knowing my options. I can control how I react to unexpected situations, even if the first response is a strong emotion and the second is a plan.
And this all leads to something I truly believe and to which I hold firm. Everything — from not making a decision to reacting to a statement, an event, a surprise — is a choice.
I can get angry when something goes my way or I can choose to learn from it (or both, depending on the situation).
I can choose to perceive an offhand comment as a dig or I can look deeper to see why I feel that way, when it might not even be about me.
And I can choose to make contingency plans to ease my stress while also knowing the end result will be different from what I plan.
What does this have to do with writing?
Everything.
What I put into my books is my choice. I can choose a tragic backstory or an easy one. I can choose to make my protagonist walk through fire or make her journey all about her insecurities (or both). And ultimately, I can choose when the book comes out, even if it’s later than I want it to be.
As writers, we have loads of large and small choices to make when we sit down to craft our books. But we also have choices as to what we do when we hit a wall, get writer’s block, or realize there’s too much to be done to hit the deadlines we’ve set.
While it may not be meant to be (I hate that phrase, especially around someone’s death), it is another turn on the path I walk. I get to choose whether I backtrack, take a left, take a right, or hold steady.
For now, I’m holding steady on Book Two of my urban fantasy series. I’ve not yet picked it up or edited it as I’ve been focused on my cozy paranormal mystery and my life challenges.
And that’s alright with me, because in the end….
Everything’s gonna be alright.