The Road Diverged

And I, I took the one less traveled.

I’ve quoted that before. I hadn’t thought about it for a while until I saw Bobby Mathews mention it on twitter to Claire Legrand. They were talking about when you have story ideas and don’t have time to write them, and Bobby said he feared never getting back to them.

PING, went my lizard brain.

The cool thing about roads is they don’t vanish behind you. One time my ex and I thought we had to go to Buffalo and drove up to Buffalo, only to find we were supposed to be in Lake Champlain on the other side of the state. (Major oops.) So … we drove across the state. Roads are not forever.

But here’s the catch – while you’re on one, you have to pay attention to the road. When you set foot down a path, you have to commit to that path. You may determine it is indeed the wrong road, but you have to give it a fair shake. After all, you picked this road for a reason.

Here’s the exception – (am I driving you bonkers yet?) – if, when you get on the path and know early on that this probably isn’t the path for you, but you stick it out anyway, you should get off the path. There is no magic length of time you MUST allow yourself to try something. If you can tell it’s not right, it’s not right. Things don’t magically get right, and most people can tell the difference between the discomfort of adapting and change to when something’s not right. So if you settle into a path and it niggles at you that you should be somewhere else, you really probably should be.

So how do you know when it’s time to get off the road? Say you committed to a road and it’s never felt right but maybe you didn’t try hard enough to focus on that road. How do you know? Should you recommit to the road and try harder? If you’ve been on the road a while and have never managed to buckle down to it before, despite efforts, may I ask what would make this time different? Wanting something to work doesn’t make it work.

I have a word that I throw around a lot in real life because it’s a very good word: INDICATIVE. This is when something serves as a sign for something else. I usually refer to things being indicative when people explain a situation and the way they ask the question (or state the problem) is its own answer. Like, “I’m having trouble writing, but I don’t really like to read.” Or, “I have horrible asthma every time I work out but I really want to be a runner.” Or, “My significant other and I have fundamentally different worldviews, but I don’t know if we should break up.” People? You are answering yourselves. These were never the right roads for you, no matter how long you have committed to walking them.

It’s hard to change roads. Driving across New York at 5AM on maybe four hours of sleep after a long week? NOT A FUN TIME. But you can do it. You can give yourself permission to change roads. My ex and I could’ve turned around and gone home. (He threatened to.) We could’ve said screw it and spent the weekend in Buffalo. But we knew we were supposed to be in Lake Champlain. It didn’t mean the drive to Buffalo was wasted time. It was a really pretty drive. The thing is, it happened. You can choose to say it meant nothing and lament the waste of time and effort, or you can accept what you learned on that road, even if only that it wasn’t your road, and move on. I’ve said elsewhere on the blog, nobody gets a clean slate. We are our pasts. Learn from where you’ve been, but remember you don’t have to stay there.

As in life, so in writing.

So what about Bobby writing some story and worrying about not getting to write some other story. Bobby? Is the story you’re working on something you enjoy working on, something that gives you a sense of accomplishment, something you can be proud of working on, that feels right? Then don’t worry about the other ideas. They may be equally good for you, but that doesn’t change that the road you’re on right now is a good enough road for you, too. The other stories will be there when you finish this one. And if the story you’re writing now doesn’t feel right, if you have to force yourself to open word, if you can force yourself to even sit down to open word? You have permission to stop. You have permission to write the new idea. You can change roads.

(I’d also like to point out that sometimes all the roads feel like a slog. You have permission to sit at a rest stop for a while, too.)