Today it will be just me pouring out the thoughts that I decided to share with you.
Did you know that if you close your eyes facing towards the sun you’ll see very nice bright colors inside your head. The colors will be changing and vary from yellow to bright red with a bright orange and all shades in- between those. You will enjoy the esthetically pleasant sensations.
Well I didn’t know either, until one day when I was writing in the balcony just before the sunset. When the sun came out and started kissing my face I decided to take a moment and concentrate on the nice sensations. So I took out the sunglasses and closed my eyes facing the sun.
Why am I telling you this you would wonder and what does it have to do with life?
Well, while watching those nice colors I realized how important the opportunities are. I thought that we never know what the opportunity will bring until we try something new. In the above example, just one small and unusual act brought me to a completely new place. A place I had never been before.
I think one should pay attention to different potential opportunities. The same goes both for life and the writing.
Sometimes the problem is that we are so obsessed with the book we are writing, that we don’t notice other things around us. We might be so focused on the initial plot of the novel that we miss the nice new twist that was not initially planned.
When I was writing my first novel I thought about the characters and re-lived the story day and night. At that period I stopped driving a car, because I sometimes forgot to look at the streetlights and signs. And what happens when we get obsessed with our book? Well, besides the fact that the chances are that we will actually finish it this time, we might also miss opportunities.
In fact, when I look back I realize that many of the exciting things that happened to me did actually happen, because I noticed the opportunity and was proactive about it.
I’ll share just one simple example so you can see what I mean.
Not many know this but my short story Stars was published by Paulo Coelho on his blog. And that was long before I had any substantial online presence or had published any of my writings. I simply read on Paulo’s blog that he was looking for short stories and he will publish the ones he liked.
Well I have to be honest here. I am not reading every single post he puts up on his blog, so it was partly a luck too. But when I did saw the post I saw an opportunity there. If I thought too long over whether to send my story to him or not, nothing would have happened. Maybe nothing would have happened even after I did send it. That was possible too. But I would never know if I did not try. So sometimes all you have to do is ignore the self doubt, stop over analyzing the situation and simply act! That’s all I did and as a result ended up being published by Paulo Coelho and my story is still there on his blog.
I guess what I wanted you to realize is that the life is full of possibilities. We simply need to be open and flexible enough to embrace them.
Pay attention to the opportunities that come your way and they may take you to a better place or change your life completely.