Earlier this winter, my neighborhood friend Katie asked if I was interested in finding an apartment with her in central Maryland to be closer to our jobs. Now I write from beautiful Annapolis in a spacious apartment with a wall of bookshelves to my right in my bedroom.
The entire process felt like a blast into hyperspeed, I can’t wrap my head around how quick everything was. Just two months ago, Katie was finishing up her PhD in upstate New York so my older sister tagged along with me on apartment tours. Nothing hit my level of satisfaction, all the places we viewed were in distant, listless areas. Through extensive Googling, something wonderful caught my attention on a local realtor’s website. The apartment of interest was close to lovely downtown Annapolis, Maryland’s maritime capital my family and I have visited all throughout my life. I immediately booked a visitation, walked around the new hardwood floors, called my friend and said “let’s do it,” and we signed that night. I prayed, God answered, and I’m reflecting on the entire journey while admiring this lovely wall of shelves the apartment came with.
Much like our relatively painless move, I sometimes wish I could make certain life moments move at hyperspeed, where I can skip the waiting or the unsure periods and get right to the good stuff. I feel that way about my writing. Can’t I just get to the part where I’m holding my book in my hands? When can I feel the fruits of my labor as a successful author in my bank account? I see this wall of bookshelves and I see hope, and potential. I’m reminded that not everything I go through will be as simple and fast as my move to this beautiful apartment that I just so happened to come across one day.
In writing, there are those who plan every one of their story beats, the “plotter,” and there are others who channel spontaneity as their muse and fly by the seat of their pants, the “pantser.” I disagree with the idea that a writer must be a plotter or a pantser, one or the other, because I believe I lie somewhere in both. Yes, I carefully tailored my apartment search and narrowed the optimal location radius when pinpointing ideal locations. But the apartment I am in now came out of the blue; I didn’t think something so me and Katie could just fall into our laps. But it happened.
Some things you can plan and plot and do all your carefully conducted research on. But not everything falls in our control, so why not roll with the punches? I didn’t think I’d have a home for my boxes and boxes of accumulated reads from grad school and beyond. Surprises can be found around the corner, or for me and my new room, around the wall of many fantastic bookshelves.