#AtoZChallenge: Can You Relate?

Can you relate?

I sit and stew in the knowledge that what’s coming is inevitable, that I can’t stop it because it’s etched into the future like into stone, and who am I to try and stop the winds of time? But knowing it’s unstoppable doesn’t keep me from worrying, doesn’t dull the edge of my panic, my terror. Something is changing, and I am in agony. 

Until the change happens. The air snaps into its new formation, and I adjust. I’ve always adjusted. When I was a kid, my family moved several times to new cities within Italy, and I dragged my feet. I have friends here! I don’t want to go! I’ll never make it work! And then we’re in the new city, I’m starting school, and snap! I’m making it work.

Can you relate?

I do this with my writing too, of course. Everything that I do in my real life translates so easily and seamlessly to my writing it seems. If things are going well, writing goes well. If I’m stressed and unhappy, if I’m antsy about nearly anything, well…that’s a whole other story.

It’s not that I lose my desire to write, because that’s always there, my one constant. Nor do I lose my motivation to write, because I’m constantly dying, wishing I were writing, crafting stories and telling them to the world. I look around me and I screech in joy when my friends reach writing milestones, when agents sign with them, when book deals are announced. These are the things I want, crave, the things I’d give up my own blood to have.

But I’m stumped. Fear has me in its clutches and won’t release me long enough to let me write.

Can you relate?

But then sometimes the need overwhelms me. My fingers twitch. The story in my brain and heart screams to be on paper, in the world. It won’t let me hold it silent anymore. 

So I pull out the trappings of my writing. For me, for this project, they are a very destroyed manuscript with comments all over the margins, words crossed out, barely legible scribbles; a notebook plotting the book out scene by scene; and of course my laptop and Scrivener. 

For other projects, for you, it might be something different. 

I sit down with the trappings of my writing, I turn on music (for this book, the music I have to listen to is actually quite specifically this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwvul_TZTxI], and I start writing.

And pretty soon, I’m flying.

Where is the fear? Vanquished. Where are the worries? Ground into dust. Why did I hesitate so long to do this thing that is bringing me so much joy?

I don’t even know.

Can you relate?

One of Operation Awesome’s very own, J Lenni Dormer, shared a video with me when we were brainstorming for this post.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=315238632426430

I mean…that’s me. (Also, I cried. Look how scared bb otter is. Look how happy bb otter is in the water. My heart. Can’t handle. Omg. So precious.)

But that’s me. A new change looms on the horizon, or I have a new book to write, or what have you, and even though it’s what’s best for me, like the water is best for bb otter, I am too afraid to see it. I try to run from it.

Sometimes I run for months, years. 

Sometimes just days, weeks.

Eventually I end up in the water and after gasping, choking for a little bit, I realize…this is where I was meant to be all along.

If only I hadn’t fought in the first place.

Can you relate? Share your own stories in the comments, if you’d like.