The Joy of Control

Everybody would love to control their own lives…but we don't. You can say you do…but you don't. No matter how much you think you do, you have to know that you really don't. Let me give you a few examples. When you drive to the store you think your in control of your own car, but what if the stupid Wal-Mart down the street is under construction and one of the crew trucks going to the site hits a bump and spills nails on the street, then you drive over the nail, it blows out the tire and you hit a power pole. You thought you were in control, but outside forces took away that control. You think your in charge of your taxes, you think you pay that one time a year, but all around you your getting hit with taxes you have no control over, gas taxes, freeway taxes, sales taxes, state taxes, and county taxes, there are taxes just everywhere you look, and you have no control over them. You think your in control of a conversation because you know that what your saying makes all the sense in the world, but that other person you're talking to can choose to not hear anything your saying and just argue for the sake of arguing. Your think your in control over what you eat, or what you drink, but there are so many steps that food and water go through long before they get to you that you have no idea what's been done to them by the time it gets to you.

No matter how much you want to control yourself and everything that goes on around you, there is a point at which you just have to accept that you can't…

Unless your a writer…

Writing is the one place where you as an author are in complete control over what you put on that blank piece of paper. If you want your character to be black sitting in the rain on the west coast of Washington waiting for the Tsunami to wash in and destroy everything he's ever know, then that's what'll happen. If you want your character to be young and full of life, only to be struck down by some horrifying creature from a different dimension that's hell bent on destroying the world, until a Captain Kirk/William Shatner type character sweeps in with a mirror that deflects the ray gun that kills the creature, then that is what will happen.

The point is writing is the one thing you can do where you're completely in charge. You create the environment, you create the players, and you make all the rules.

So if there are time when things feel like they are spiraling out of control and you need to recapture the feeling of being any where close to being in control, stop, take a deep breath, pick up a pen, find a piece of paper and start writing. You never know that character your writing about could seem real similar to yourself, but you can make sure all their troubles have a solution…I find killing them all off works for me…