Words

I love words, lucky since I write I know :) But I do love words. I love how they can be arranged, and then rearranged and changed. I love how a sentence can be changed so that the meaning is the same but the words are different. I love how that can change the whole look of a piece of writing. When I edit I spend a lot of time rearranging words and sentences, changing how paragraphs start and finish.

Writing is about control too, of course. Words can be controlled, changed, arranged just the way you like. Stories can be told as you wish, characters can say exactly what you want them to say. Well, not exactly, my characters frequently surprise me, but more or less.

Real life can't be controlled so easily, people are just pesky the way they insist on being individual and refusing to follow the script prepared for them - of course they don't know they have a script but that's no excuse! So real life, as opposed to the life inside my head, can be quite daunting. I don't know what people will say or do, I don't know what will happen from day to day.

I spent a big part of my life trying to control the people around me, usually with a spectacular fail rating. I was a pretty slow learner, but I finally figured out that it is far too stressful both for me and for the people around me to try to control everything. It's pretty difficult for me to let things happen and unfold as they will, and I have to fight the urge to control it all, but it really doesn't work.

Real life is full of surprises, some good and some bad. The trick is to stay open and willing to allow real life to just happen. You can't write it or plan it or organise it. Well you can plan and organise, but you also have to be able to bend and flex. I'm not good at bending and flexing in my life, if my plans get changed I panic a little bit. I am actually very good at being spontaneous, what I'm not good at is going along with someone else's spontaneity. That is because I've already planned my day and it's hard for me to do what is essentially a re-write.

This stage of my life is about letting go a little bit. Not trying to control everything so that it goes the way I wrote it in my head. Sometimes in life the most wonderful moments and the most wonderful people happen completely unexpectedly. In fact I think that it is those unexpected moments that shine the most brightly. And it is the people who have completely unexpectedly and without any internal scripting come to mean a lot to me who shine the brightest also.