(Title is a Pilgrim’s Progress reference).
It’s very easy to believe the future is fixed.
Before I met TYG four years ago, I’d concluded my future romantic prospects were zero. None. Ever. Even my daydreams usually ended with getting dumped (the burden of being a writer: I’d try to add “conflict” or “realism” to the story and that translated into “Goodbye”).
Due to the lack of pay increases and then the 2009 pay cut at my last employer, I didn’t see much hope for my finances turning around: Like so many others, they were dwindling as my salary failed to keep pace with rising health-insurance premiums and prices. And having tried freelancing full-time with no success several years earlier, that obviously wasn’t going to be an option, ever (particularly at an age where I use my health insurance fairly frequently).
Now I’m very happily married, freelancing full-time, making more money and much less stressed and depressed (I wasn’t clinically depressed, just sad at times. Though I think a few more years might have tipped me into depression.).
All of which reminds me how terribly easy it is to believe that the future is fixed, that nothing can ever change or improve, and be wrong.
I don’t mean to be Pollyannaish: Sometimes people do wind up with no way out. Or they die alone. Or they lose their job, their home and wind up living on the streets and never find a way to pull it together again.
But there’s no way to know how the story ends until it ends. No way to be certain until we reach the last act, whether it’s disaster, triumph or eucatastrophe. Which is why it’s good not to give up: As long as we’re in the game, we can still hope for a victory. And sometimes we get one.
It’s a comforting thought when I look at almost a year without any short story sales. It’s depressing, but I’ve had long droughts before, and then, eventually, I started selling again. Maybe this time it won’t happen. But maybe it will.
And if not, at least I’ll never be one of those people sitting around wondering if maybe, if they’d written a novel, they’d have sold it and become famous (I don’t think knowing the answer is no is entirely a happy thought, but it’s preferable to the alternative).
My thoughts, for whatever they’re worth.
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