One of my favorite things about meeting with writers is listening to their stories. I'm curious by nature and I tend to look for patterns in the various stories I hear. I ponder the clues life has to offer through the experiences of others and I try to detect if fulfillment was accessed from swimming against the current, or an effortless, obvious route. I'm often struck by the significant role random people play in one's life. In a recent meeting I asked a successful writer when she knew this was going to be her career. She laughed. Her creative pursuit in college and the years after was acting, first in NYC and later in Los Angeles. She never harbored a secret desire to write, never kept a journal, or contemplated plots for her unwritten novel. In her early twenties she worked as a paralegal in a law firm to pay the bills. Her boss accommodated her audition schedule, and oddly kept encouraging her to write, an outlet she never desired to pursue. One Christmas for her bonus, her boss gave her a six week writing course, a class that changed her life. I wonder about the guideposts in my life, the bumpers urging me to stay on the path, and the forces steering me in a different direction. I wonder about messages I'm unable to hear, and those that are too loud to ignore. I contemplate destiny, the meaning of fate, the feeling in my gut when everything seems so right, aligned in a perfect union and at other times when the world feels off kilter. I wonder where that feeling comes from, the intrinsic knowing that has been inside of me the whole time.
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