“Time of My Life”

I’ve been a lazy blogger this week, but it’s been in service of knocking out some other writing that will hopefully get us one step closer to the bookshelves. Does that get me a pass? No, I know it doesn’t.

There’s a lovely woman named Allison Winn Scotch who manages to both keep her blog current, pen a bestseller, and appear on the Today show last week. Go, Allison, Go! I’m picking up her new book tomorrow, and am very excited to read it. It’s called “Time of My Life”, and is about all of the choices we make in life- if we had them to do over again, would we? Allison’s character gets the chance to find out. The book’s garnered huge kudos and a major film production deal, which is great. But what I really love is how Allison spells out why she thinks this is happening to her book. Here’s a link to her blog…go check it out.

Basically, she says not to let your ego and fear of failure get in the way of achieving the things you want in this go-round. I so agree with her.

Two summers ago, I found a journal that was eight years old. In its pages, I was nattering on about how I wanted to be a writer, but oh, writing is so SCARY, and I wanted to write a book, but oh, what if it wasn’t GOOD, and wah wah wah, blah blah blah. You get the idea. It was my inner critic come to life on the page. And I let her win for a long time.

When I re-read that, years later, and saw that I still hadn’t achieved the one goal I’d had since I was a small child. Something in me clicked and said, “Why not?” After all, the worst thing that could happen wouldn’t be that I’d write and it would suck.

It would be that I never wrote what I wanted. The BEST thing would be that I wrote, and learned, and got better. And got feedback, and met people, and gained confidence, and learned that this is a skill like any other. No one has a magic pen that spills perfection and moonbeams and kitty-cats onto the page. It’s work, but it can also feel so joyous and easy when you hit your stride and something starts to come together. I love that feeling, and I’m so grateful I get to have it.

What are some of your dreams that you’re stepping into?