My first blog post was exactly a year ago. So I'd planned a where-are-we-now, what's-happened-in-a-year post for today. On Wednesday I worked five hours in a favorite cafe. It started with a meeting with a writing friend/crit partner, and then on my own I delved into Our Spirit. I saw another friend walk by and she joined me for a couple of hours. At one point in our conversation, she told me she'd been thinking about me, specifically about the blog – how flattering that someone was thinking about my blog – and more specifically that she was concerned that Going with the Flow was exactly the wrong message.
I talked about how a few years ago I was in a filmmaking group in NYC with the name Making It Happen. During my time with the group I turned a screenplay into a novel and had so much fun with the novel that I did more and more prose writing until most of my time was writing and not filmmaking. I still produce short films for Our Spirit... but my passionest passion is prose. I was no longer interested in making a film career happen. I celebrated the flow that got me to novels.
My friend talked about the power of making a decision. Paraphrasing... of just doing it.
Okay. I get it.
I'm not here by accident. The flow didn't just splash me up on a rock. Goals and decisions have power.
I'm making the decision to move on querying novel #1. I'm picturing exactly what I want - representation for a novel about a romantic tangle of three high school guys.
What about my other projects – editing novel #2, first draft of novel #3, a new website, Our Spirit? I trust the flow.
And you guys? Is there tension between going with the flow and setting goals?
(I Googled "huh?" and found this image from Dangerous With A Pen, the blog of writer Lindsey Brooks. Now I'm a follower.)
1 week ago