TO HELL WITH LUCK
Everyone seems to have a story about discovering years later that some attractive person was actually attracted to you. There was an OPPORTUNITY there that you could not see for lack of confidence or capacity to read signals.
That's love. If you can wrap your mind around that, you will probably also remember a time you DID figure it out in time, and formed a love bond. "Luck"? Or capacity to FINALLY see what was going on?
If you can admit that yes, you finally figured out how to interpret someone's shy glance or body language, you can use that realization. What opportunities in life were RIGHT THERE, but you couldn't see them? They actually had to smack you upside the head to get your attention?
Man oh man, is that ever the secret in life: the opportunities are there. Study people who started with your resources and over-performed and you'll see that they not only learned to recognize opportunities but learned to take constant ACTION that matched their pace, their energetics, to the pace of those who move in those circles.
Sure, there was "luck" in finding Steve Muhammad, but I had to do the work to recognize quality when I saw it, to be a discriminating consumer…but also to go to Martial Arts Expos to be exposed to enough people to see his shocking excellence.
Sure, I was "lucky" to find Tananarive…but we BOTH did massive work on ourselves emotionally before we ever met, so that we could be open and ready for something real. And we ALSO had to have put in the work to be invited to the "African American Fantastic Imagination" conference with Octavia Butler and Samuel Delaney. We were moving in the same direction, at similar enough speeds. I was clear enough to recognize a lioness when I saw one, and knew myself to be the lion she needed.
And of COURSE I was "lucky" enough to find a mentor in Larry Niven…who became friend and family. But again, I had to do the preliminary work so that when I said "hello, Mr. Niven. My name is Steven Barnes and I'm a writer" and he answered "all right. Tell me a story" I didn't stutter and freeze, and had actually put a story in the mail earlier THAT DAY about a compulsive gambler who hocked his pacemaker. Larry was amused. The conversation started.
Can you see the work involved to actually develop skills like completing stories? How about the CONFIDENCE to be able to walk up to one of the greatest SF writers of the 20th century and take the risk of rejection? That it wasn't "luck"--I was PLAYING THE ODDS. I'd asked several other writers first (you'd know the names) and been turned down. And I'd have kept going until someone said "yes." Why? Because I am that bitch. But I wasn't BORN that way. That was work, and meditation, and affirmation, and years of martial arts training to learn how to manage fear and failure.
Set up everything in your life so that you don't need "luck". You play the odds. This is the key to the LIFEWRITING writing process: you do the work, you set yourself up for constant growth, you submit a story a month. Do that, and be willing to write and submit a HUNDRED stories, and you are on a path of mastery, such that your constant improvement and constant networking will eventually cross you over the minimum threshold, and SOMEONE will say "yes." Then you get to ask yourself what combination of practices produced your positive results, recalibrate and start over. This is a way that actually works, and its worked for everyone in 25 stories or less.
LUCK? Well…I think you know the answer. There is luck in the world, yes. THROW OUT ANY EXPECTATION OF FINDING "LUCK". Instead, set up your daily ritual to optimize your odds. Then, find ways to take pleasure in the process (you DO enjoy writing, right? Right?)
Then, every day you get to give thanks, feel gratitude for a life that allows you to spend your time doing something you love. If you are writing part-time, give thanks for a job that allows you to pay the bills so that you can have a wonderful writing hobby. And if you DON'T have a job, give thanks for a dream powerful enough to motivate you to find a job for practical suppport while you work toward your destiny.
NO MATTER WHAT, find a way to be grateful. Do that, and you START your day with the positive emotions most won't feel unless they get the Big Sale. You WIN, every day, no matter what.
And that ain't luck. That's keeping your work to the child within you to do all you can, every day, to keep her safe and keep her dreams alive.
Namaste
Steve
