Hands of Chrystalee (Photo credit: Moyan_Brenn)

The more years I live on this earth, the more I understand there is power in letting go.

Letting go of what you want. Letting go of what you’re better off without. Letting go of the outcome.

When my daughter was younger, she was very attached to her toys (well, she still is). She never wanted to give anything away, whether to sell in a garage sale or to give to a charity. Again and again I would tell her that if she’s clinging to what she has, her hands aren’t free to receive new things, different things, better things. Sometimes she understood. Sometimes it was a battle.

All that time I was telling her this lesson, I was also talking to me.

Writing — more specifically, revising — is teaching me this lesson now. This idea of cutting away what your story is better off without so there’s room for something new, something better — even though you love what is already there.

It can be painful, the letting go. But what I’ve found time and again is it’s always better, after. What comes as a result of letting go is always surprising, and always greater than what I imagined it would be.

In my first rounds of edits with my editor, I had to rewrite the ending of my book so it fit the new two-book structure we’d created. This was very difficult for me. I loved-loved-loved my ending. But it wouldn’t have made sense in the story arc if I’d left it as is. So I cut the chapter and wrote a new ending. That new ending completely opens up the possibilities for the second book.

If you never let go, there’s never room for possibilities.

It comes down to ego, I think, or maybe security. We think we know best and we close ourselves off to the suggestions of others. Or we want to stay with what we know, what’s safe.

Letting go involves releasing what we think we know, releasing what we think we deserve, accepting that we’re not as in charge as we think we are.

When I think back through my life, I can count several situations where I let go of my expectations and the outcome, and it literally changed my life. (And I do mean literally, not the actually not-literal way some people use the word.)

So, ask yourself: is there something you have a death-grip on today? What would happen if you released that grip? What would happen (could happen) if you let go?

I was listening to the heart of my novel, ANOTHER HERE, ANOTHER NOW in a song!

That’s pretty cool.

I pulled out my phone and Shazam’d it (great app, btw). It was “Stay” by Rihanna, featuring Mikky Ekko.

Here’s a video of the song and lyrics. If you listen, you’ll hear the story of my characters, Danny and Eevee.

IN OTHER NEWS: I’m having a Sherlock-themed giveaway this week! Check out this post to enter to win. Only two days left, so enter today!

Benedict Cumberbatch (Photo credit: honeyfitz)

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of listening to the adaptation of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen on BBC Radio 3.

Here’s the summary/description from the BBC:

“Benedict Cumberbatch, Greta Scacchi and Simon Russell Beale star in Michael Frayn’s award-winning play about the controversial 1941 meeting between physicists Bohr and Heisenberg, part of a joint Radio 3 and Radio 4 series of three Michael Frayn dramas for radio – including new adaptations of his novels, ‘Skios’ and ‘Headlong’.

Copenhagen, Autumn 1941. The two presiding geniuses of quantum physics, Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg meet for the first time since the breakout of war.

Danish physicist Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, live in Nazi-occupied Denmark; their visitor, Heisenberg, is German. Two old friends, now on opposing sides, who between them have the ability to change the course of history.

But why has Heisenberg – Bohr’s former protégé – come to Copenhagen?

Michael Frayn’s Tony award-winning play imagines the three characters re-drafting the events of 1941 in an attempt to make sense of them. A powerful exploration of the uncertainties of human memory and motivation.”

I found this production so fascinating! (And no, not just because it was two hours of listening to Cumberbatch’s voice.) The story is a swirl of science and interpersonal relationships. It touches on strong emotions but never gets heavy-handed. It is both minimalist and vivid. And my favorite part: the structure/writing, which at first is disconcerting, evolves into a form or example of the very subject matter Bohrs and Heisenberg tangle with throughout the play! *kabooom* There goes my writer brain. I LOVE that kind of meta, self-referential literary trickery.

If, like me, you enjoy when science and story collide (ha), you might want to give this production a listen. I highly recommend it.

You can listen to Copenhagen at BBC Radio 3. (Be warned: how long that link will be active, I don’t know.)

From the article:

“There is growing concern that our emotional and empathetic pathways are being eroded by all the screen time. We spend so much time on our computers and gadgets that we are starting to think like them. Brain circuits are being rewired to accommodate these tools of modern life. We process more bits and bytes of information, and we are quite fast at it. But there could be a trade-off – our motivations to act like Superman are diminishing.”

A couple of months ago over at the Parking Lot Confessional, I blogged about my concerns over how reading online has negatively affected my ability to sit and read a book.

Again from Dembosky’s article:

“Our ability to pay attention and focus is also being taxed. Most studies show the human brain is not equipped to handle multiple streams of information at once. But we sit for many hours in front of multiple screens, flitting back and forth between various windows. A 2009 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that people who had become practised at ‘chronic media multitasking’ were worse at filtering out irrelevant distractions and at switching between tasks than people who spent less time on gadgets.”

Looks like my concerns aren’t entirely unfounded. Reading this article on my laptop while sitting next to my son who was playing a game on my iPad, I began to despair over what we’re doing to our brains. But then I read this:

“Matt Langione lies on his back in an MRI machine, reading a copy of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Neuroscientists in Stanford’s imaging laboratory are comparing the patterns in his brain when he skims the pages leisurely, and when he concentrates hard on the literary form. The technicians are surprised by what they find. The areas of the brain that light up during close reading are not just those associated with attention, but also those involved in movement and touch. It is as if readers physically place themselves in the story when they analyse it more carefully… That could mean the more people read superficially, the less they put themselves in other people’s shoes.”

And it hit me: this is why story matters. Getting lost in a book connects us to the emotional core of what it means to be  human. It teaches us empathy and compassion by causing us to live in someone else’s world and walk a different path than our own.

Perhaps I’m off base here, teasing a theory from between the lines of the study. But my bet is if they focused on studying concentrated reading of fictional texts (which I hope they do), they’d find that reading stories makes us better people.

I spent the first day of 2013 looking at sights like this:

Far over the misty mountains cold…

And this…

Middle Earth? No, Colorado.

Now I’m back in my own shire and my own Hobbit hole, and that means comfort. The sun is shining, hubby has his feet up on the coffee table, the kids are playing with their Hobbit Lego sets and I’m drinking papaya juice.

Not a bad start to the year, really.

A couple of years ago I gave up setting resolutions for choosing a word to guide my year instead. In 2011, my word was “complete”. Last year my word was “becoming“. During our trip, I did a lot of thinking while staring at those snowing mountains. What word would fit where I am now, and help steer me to where I want to be?

I decided on “spirit“.

From thesaurus.com:

Main Entry: spirit [spir-it] (noun)
Definition: soul, attitude
Synonyms: air, animation, ardor, backbone, boldness, breath, character, complexion, courage, dauntlessness, disposition, earnestness, energy, enterprise, enthusiasm, essence, fire, force, frame of mind, gameness, grit, guts, heart, humor, jazz, life, life force, liveliness, mettle, mood, morale, motivation, nerve, oomph, outlook, psyche, quality, resolution, resolve, sparkle, spunk, stoutheartedness, substance, temper, temperament, tenor, vigor, vital spark, vitality, warmth, will, willpower, zest

During our jaunt through the misty mountains, I read a book that broke personality types into four categories, and gave lengthy descriptions for each. Of the four, it was blatantly clear I’m a Type 1, which means I like things light and fun. I giggle a lot. I try to offer others hope. My life is often unstructured and my schedule spontaneous.2012 was an exciting year, especially in terms of my writing career. I signed with an agent and landed a two-book deal with Knopf BFYR. My hope this year is to fill out the new shape my life has taken, as well as expand my creativity into new areas. It’s going to take a lot of boldness, courage and willpower (i.e., spirit) to make all my plans happen. I’m going to throw myself into my creative work with zest and spunk and energy (aka, spirit). And I’d like to do it all while keeping perspective on who I am, (i.e., my spirit).

I did a little searching on the word “spirit” and came across this quote from Leonardo de Vinci:

“Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.”

God made me this way for a reason, and my goal is to honor that in the work I do and the way I live this year.

So, here’s to a spirited 2013. *cheers*