Fate or Life?

Do you believe in fate?

Do you believe we control our lives or are our lives all planned out from the day we were born?  Do you sit around waiting for life to happen or do you take charge and make it happen.  I'm not sure what I believe.  As a romance writer I must believe in fate somewhat or I wouldn't be able to write the tale of a happy ending. 

It seems as if life sometimes just happens.  When it does, it is best to look at it as a good thing or it will tear you down.  One time my son asked me how I was able to go on when bad things keep happening to us.  I told him I really didn't know but everything always worked out.  It may not be the way you planned or vision it, but it always does.

Our lives can always be worse than what they are and we think we can't go on.  Sometimes I want to curl up and let life take me down, but for some reason I never do.  I put one foot in front of the other and because somewhere in the world, there is always someone else having it worse.  I may not do it gracefully but I do it.

How do you get by and keep going?  Share with us and maybe we all can find the will to go on when it appears it's not going to get any better. 

Promo Wednesday

We all need a little help in this world.  I would like to give this opportunity to writers new and established to promote either their work in progress or an already published book.  This is a new blog so there aren't many followers as of yet.  However in time, I hope to build a following.  For this Wednesday promo please leave a paragraph or sentence from page twenty-five. If you are not a writer but are reading something, you can also play by doing the same with the book you are reading.  Leave the name of the book and the author.  Please no erotic.

I will start it out with a paragraph from my book Guilty Hearts published with Desert Breeze Publishing.  Enjoy.

Dee's stomach did back flips, and she wished she'd never agreed to any of this. Since she
had, she needed to show all of them Matt didn't get under her skin. There was something about
Sandra that Dee couldn't put her finger on. Maybe she read it wrong. Otherwise, how would
Cody have turned out so well-behaved? Nate appeared quiet, as he let Sandra control the
conversation, while Matt teased the boys. It surprised Dee how well Matt handled the preteens.
She didn't remember him to be the type, or maybe he always was and she'd forgotten. After all,
wasn't he always the one to keep the peace between her and Steve? Dee watched him through
hooded eyes, while Matt appeared to ignore her. Was he slighting her? It made her edgy. She
didn't want to feel like this, but couldn't think of how to stop. Lori, her sister, insisted she still
had a thing for Matt, and those feelings hadn't died, or else she'd be married already. Dee didn't
know what to believe anymore. What she did know was seeing how he treated Cody and Jared
brought her a sense of peace. Whatever happened between them didn't appear to affect the way
he treated her son. If she could trust him to stick around for the two of them, she'd accept him
back with open arms. No matter how much she denied it, the resolve to keep him out of her heart
had weakened.

The Inner Critic

Like a lot of people, I have a voice in my head critiquing everything I do.  For writers the voice is sometimes  furious in telling us we don't match up, we write crap.  It's a constant battle to put the fingers to the keyboard and block out this voice.  If you try to ignore it, it gets louder and louder until you have to beat it down.

Even if you are not a writer, there may times when the annoying whinny voice is shouting at you.  I follow a blog by Kristen Lamb.  One of her blogs is to step out of your comfort zone.  She states if you feel uncomfortable, you are heading in the right direction.  We must be headed in the right direction when our inner critic is screaming in our ears.  If we are only hearing silence we might be too comfortable and need to change directions.

Embrace your inner critic but don't let it rule you.  When I get that tightening in my stomach, I tell myself to keep going.  Someday it will lead us to great things. If nothing else I'll end up with a finish product to submit to my editor.

What is your inner critic telling you?  Do you keep it quiet or do you let it push you forward?