Two Years

Life is sometimes about taking chances. We don’t know what the outcome will be, but we still take the chance anyway.

Two years ago, I took a chance. I took my first Muy Thai Kick Boxing class.

I’m not normally one who takes risks so easily. I’m usually the person who looks at all of the options and carefully weighs the pro’s and con’s before making a decision.

I took a chance when I took that first class. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Two years later, the results are astounding. My weight is down to a number (despite my love of carbs) I have not seen for several years. I feel better, I look better and my social circle has grown exponentially.

It’s not easy to take a chance. The “what if’s” are ever present. It’s easy to stay with the status quo. But sometimes we have to take risks. The results may not be what we wanted right away, but they may in the end produce amazing results.

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Kill Your Darlings

There is a statement in writing that all writers know and dread: kill your darlings.

For the non writers reading this post, it means editing. It is not the easy editing where a writer would correct a spelling or grammatical error. To kill your darlings as a writer is hard editing. It means that the writer is changing a beloved passage or making changes that they didn’t think they needed to make.

I’ve been killing my darlings since January. About six or seven years ago, I wrote a draft of a novel. It is my adaptation of Beauty And The Beast with Bronte-esque elements. In January, I joined a local novel writing group via meetup. I knew at that time that it was nowhere near the point where I felt comfortable sending it out for possible publication. The first meetup confirmed my feelings.

Since then, I have been killing my darlings again and again.

It’s not easy, especially considering the time I put into the novel prior too joining the group. But the effort (and sometimes heartache) is totally worth it. While my novel is still far from the point of sending out for possible publication, it is slowly getting there.

I know that I will have to continue to kill my darlings for as long as it takes. It’s not easy, but if the end result is publication, then it must be done.