To Thine Own Self

I'm not one to let moss grow under my feet. So while I wait to hear about The Teacher, I keep writing. Normally, I write grown up, contemporary type novels, but recently I've taken to short stories and - a departure and also a return to my roots - a young adult fantasy novel (though I use the term fantasy most loosely).

Since the YA novel felt so new, I found myself inclined to adopt a different narrative approach. I thought it should be more direct, simpler, less humorous. Normally, if you have not already deduced from previous entries, my style could accurately be described as "chatty." So be it. Still, I thought, I did not ALWAYS have to chat my way through every book. Certainly I could rein it in to tell a nice adventure story. And yet the more I strove to fit myself into this straight and narrow jacket, the more I disliked the story.

The lesson here is simple. I am not going to bother writing anything unless I can write it in exactly the way I like to write it. No, not like, need - must! For such is the bliss of life itself. That which you must do. We have all been put on this planet to speak one voice - our own - and so we must, for if we don't, who will? I try to get around this sometimes myself, hoping to, God help me, "fit in." What a curse. There is nothing into which anyone can fit.

Ah, but to be anyone but me. Me with all my troubles and uncertainty. Me with a brain like a loaded gun at three in the morning. I look around me, and everyone else's life seems so simple, if only they would get out of their own way. Why, if I could just step into their skin, I could straighten their lives out in a blink.

But that's just the trouble, isn't it? You're life, start to finish, is your own, all your troubles and loves and losses and hopes and beauties. It's all yours and it's all you. And all of that that is you is what speaks when you speak. Speak out! Lift the shade and let God shine through, I say. Shine on.