I’m feeling a little mystical this morning, pondering fate and the existence of that fickle finger that leads you into new directions.
Perhaps the bottle of old vine zinfandel I had with my dinner last night had something to do with it. Or maybe it was the scorpion I saw climbing the wall next to my chair. I leaped to my feet and pointed it out to Capt. Mark (who promptly found a new use for his book).
Back to signs and fate.
We finally bought a television set. We’ve been without since 2014 (boating) so I’ve read a lot of books and learned about events of import on my smart phone. We hooked it up and turned it on. Nice picture. Couldn’t change the volume or the channel. Frustrated, we picked up the manual and it gave us a clue. Put the little box thingy in front of the TV, not the back. It has to receive a signal from the remote. Duh. We did it and it worked!
A sign of brain overload or was it a sign telling us we didn’t need a TV? I’ll go with the first.
I’m a believer in fate, in things happening for a reason. It’s hard sometimes, but I actually believe when you lose one opportunity, you eventually find something better to take its place. Naïve? Maybe. As a writer who has received more rejections than I can count, especially early on, I had to believe to keep going. Eventually a book sold, then another, then another.
That fickle finger intervened at the point where I thought I was a deranged twerp thinking I could write fiction.
I admit it’s hard to keep going when life throws you a zinger. What am I doing wrong? What am I missing? Chances are outside forces are at work that have nothing to do with you or your performance. In publishing it’s sometimes as simple as they’ve just bought five books similar to yours and while yours is good, they’ve filled their slots.
Which brings me back to fate. I have a series set in mid-19th century California. I haven’t shopped it yet. Book one is nearly ready, book two has a first draft, and book three is an idea floating around in my brain. It’s unusual so it will be a hard sell. When it’s ready, I will employ positive thinking, but I will need that fickle finger to be on my side.
So what do zinfandel and scorpions have to do with this? The first is a reminder one usually has a lot of good things going on in one’s life and the other says you don’t let adversity slither along your wall. You zap it.
And you always read the manual that comes with a new TV.