On your path to authorship, there’s something or someone you believe you need, a piece of the puzzle that still eludes you. You can see the outcome, even feel it, but you’re not 100 percent sure how to attain it. So, you plan and scheme, plot and pray, only to find out that something remains beyond your reach or perhaps you’re not as bright as you thunk you were.
Yes, books ARE slippery, especially those closest to us. If you’re pulling your spleen out through your nose to tell your tale, you know the struggle of staying tethered to your storyline as your life races past your plotted end. Holy speed demon, how the bleep do I stop this thing? It’s not helpful (except that it is) that your writing gets better as you go. Just try to keep your hands from reworking your opening once you finish, over and over again, into infinity. Bless us all is all I’m sayin’.
Perhaps this bit from chapter 19 of my Beautiful Writers book Slippery as a Seal: The Gifts of Surrender will help in the slip:
“This is where being married to a specific outcome can really jack you up. Perhaps you misread the situation? You wanted a result so badly that you temporarily didn’t recognize yourself when things went sideways? Maybe you tried to force something and face-planted?
“There’s a better way: surrender. There’s opportunity in loosening your grip, pivoting, in the shifting of gears. Warning: You might have to drop something—an idea, seven chapters, your ego, a person, some comfort—along the way. I didn’t say this was going to be easy, people. But I did promise an adventure! And, trust me, your loved ones will be entertained by all the cuckoo crap you do. You will be, too—once you’re far enough out to feel gratitude for the madness.”
I snort laughed through pots of tea while reliving the magic and mayhem of my journey for Beautiful Writers, remembering how I barely held on in the early days. “Ahhh. The folly of youth,” Danielle LaPorte said of the risks I took for the rewards I sought. Solutions I could never have known and had trouble trusting in were aplenty as my dreams only appeared to slip away. Of course, there was magic in the slip. A beautiful plan unfolded through new touchstones and horizons. I trust you’ll feel similarly in time.
You. Your book. Your muse. You’re crafty, artful, and smart as hell. Clarity is coming, my friend.
Linda
PS. Agree? Disagree? Got a slip story to share? I’d love to hear about it on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter—where I’m social from my bed office. Ha. I know you know. #ExtrovertedIntrovert 
