What if?

I want to live a life where the future is a gift, not a threat.

Dear Writer,

The Year of Writing Magically class of 2023 is in, and it’s full. My max was 20; I’m at 20.

Plus me; I forget, I am also a student. So… 21.

And that’s the thing… I’ve been so busy getting everything together, that I have forgotten… I am also a student.

I get to write my novel this year in the environment I want, the environment I built. Warm. Inviting. Supportive. Community.

I mean, don’t get me wrong; I’m psyched to lead this workshop, but more than anything, I’m excited to participate in it. This means that everything I’ve been doing to lead up to this is also opening up the space and time for me to work on my project.

I’m going to write again.

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The idea of writing fiction again, of telling stories again, fills me with such a strong sense of coming home to myself that I can’t quite wrap my mind around it. I was so focused on setting everything up and building the thing that I didn’t notice that I was leading myself back to the place where I started, the place I’ve been trying to get back to for so long.

Y’all, it’s been a long time. I’ve dabbled in a couple of fictional spaces for a bit here and there, but now I’m finally building my life around doing this work again. I’m reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic again, which is my discovery phase bible, and getting so jazzed about getting into this work.

Part of me is also nervous, of course.

What if I can’t do it?

What if I’ve changed so much that I’ve lost my ability to write fiction?

What if I get partway through and I get lost and can’t finish?

What if? What if? What if?

The reality of it is… I don’t know. How can I know? Until I sit down to do the work, there’s no way of knowing if I can really do it or not. I know I can teach the hell out of this workshop; what I don’t know is if I can successfully participate in it.

And I won’t know until December of this year, when we close up the workshop and everyone walks away with their projects under their arms. But I think it’s going to be okay, because there are a lot of other what ifs floating around.

What if I’m an even better writer than before?

What if knowing everything I know about story and teaching it for so long has made me less likely to go off on a 10,000-word tangent that I’ll just have to cut later?

What if everything I’ve been through, the ways in which trauma has fundamentally changed my brain and DNA, opens me up to fictional spaces that are even more rewarding, for me and for my readers?

What if? What…. if? What oh-my-god if?

Do you notice how we don’t do that as much? We catastrophize potential outcomes, but we don’t imagine the wonderful potential outcomes. I think we’re afraid of thinking along the “best case scenario” lines because if it doesn’t turn out that way, we’ll have gotten our hopes up for nothing. I have been worst-case-scenario-ing my life away since I was little; I think in some ways it makes me feel safe, because when I do the worst-case thing, I’m prepared for the worst no matter what happens.

But it comes at a hell of a cost. I worry and fret and lose sleep and stress out. I’m less happy and grounded in the moment because I’m trying to prepare myself for the worst possible thing. That adds up to a lot of wasted energy; plus, I’ve had the worst case scenario happen a couple of times in my life, and always one of two things happened.

Usually, what happens is that the Terrible Thing wasn’t even on my imagined list of worst-case scenarios and I was not prepared, but I reacted and figured it out and found a way through.

Or, I worried and fretted and the worst thing happened and I was kind of prepared, but it didn’t make anything any easier. The hard parts were just as hard, and my ability to react and figure it out and find a way through was still necessary to the process. But in the meantime, before the Bad Thing happened, I’d wasted way so much precious energy fretting and went into the situation more exhausted than I would have been if I had just let the future be and enjoyed the present I had before it all went sideways.

I think I’m not going to do that anymore. I think I’m going to energize myself with best-case-scenarios (including a rental house that Ian and I really, really want, if you have good rental-house vibes to spare, send them our way). I’m tired of paying such a high price to forestall disappointment. I want to be excited about the future. I want to energize myself with hope for the best case scenario. I want to live a life where the future is a gift, not a threat.

In fact… I’m not a huge fan of resolutions, but I think I can get on board with a New Year’s focus, and this is what I’m going to make my focus for 2023.

I’m going to imagine the best case scenario for everything. I’m going to forestall nothing. I’m going to open up my arms and say, “Universe, I am deserving and ready to receive all the wonderful things you’ve been waiting to show me.”

I am going to go ahead and mentally put all of our things in that house we are hoping to rent, imagining my new office space where I will lead this workshop and write the next Lani Diane Rich novel.

I mean, why not try something new, right?

Everything,

L