Getting Across The Room

If you have been through a life training program or you are just really well adjusted, you may have heard this term before....there are a thousand ways to get across the room. I didn't believe it because I could think of ten ways and I concluded that I was right and neener neener suck a wiener. I wasn't in that group of well adjusted, in case you were wondering.

In a room with 30 people on one side and a trainer at the other end, the game begins. How are you getting across the room? If you are part of the first 10, you use the most well known methods of skipping, jumping, hopping, crawling or walking. Then the fun really begins because the rest of you jackasses have to find the other 5,000 ways that look nothing like what you have just seen. Crawling on your neighbor's back for a pony ride, scooting over on a chair, rolling like a small child. Honestly, the ways seemed endless and they were all lots of fun. Obviously it's a lesson about life. There are millions of ways to get through this crazy journey. There are ways to raise kids, ways to be a spouse and ways to be a writer. Have the ways of other writers worked? Yes. Some of them rolled right over to the other side and got published, have thousands of FB fans and are working on their 600th book. Is that the only way to get to that side? No. I'm working on getting there my own way, which is really out of character for a people pleaser like myself.

There are endless books, blogs, articles (usually with a number listing how many tips they will give you on how to be successful) and this week, I read way too many of them. 27 Ways to Finish Your Manuscript in 24 Hours, 10 Tried and True Tips Every Writer Must Know, 89 Ways To Get Published. I was gearing up to replicate someone else's trip across the room, because they know and I don't. I'm learning to filter out advice, decide if it jives with what I want to accomplish and burying the rest in my backyard next to my dog's chew toys.

I get stuck (very often and more than I care to admit) in how to do it like that author I just saw on Amazon or that guy on NPR or that jackass who's book just sold 10 million copies. Yeah, that's the ticket, I'll get across the room like him, with my hand down my pants, sporting a squirrelly smile. Then I remember that his way and my way are different, mostly because I don't like my hand down my pants as much as he does. I am also learning to accept that his way and my way are both valid. I don't know what it will look like when I get to the other side of the room, but I know that there is more than one way to get there.