Stretch!!!!

Have you ever taken yoga? If you have, you’ve probably found yourself in some pretty awkward positions as you stre…ee…ttttch. We do this in an attempt to bring balance into our world, to ease the tension in our bodies and basically to become more well-rounded and a healthier individuals.

Stretching is, well, it’s good for us. But let’s face it. Stretching isn’t always easy. i.e. They want me to put my leg where? It requires us to push our limits, to extend ourselves just a little bit beyond where we’ve gone before. We often tell ourselves that stretching can be dangerous. We could pull a muscle. Or as in yoga class, there’s plenty of times I felt I made an idiot out of myself. Heck, a few times in yoga, I found myself seeing parts of my own body I’d never seen before. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.

Ahh, but I’m not really talking about yoga or physically stretching. I’m talking about stretching ourselves in other ways. Stretching ourselves mentally, or maybe just getting out of our comfort zones, trying something new, something different, and opening our minds to other possible paths. And I guess yoga could even be part of your new path.

The thing is, it’s so easy for us women to get to some place in our lives. Be it a new job, a new title as: wife, mother, AARP member, published author, or maybe it’s just reaching an ideal weight. And generally we got to the new place by stretching, by challenging ourselves. Yet once we arrive, what do we do? We master the new challenges and then we build ourselves another comfort zone.

We tell ourselves that we’ve earned this reprieve and it’s true we did earn it. We worked hard. The problem is that some of us, myself included, get too comfortable and we simply aren’t stretching anymore. We aren’t growing. Or, we’re only growing in one way. And is that enough?

A little over a year ago, I had an editor from a big publishing house call my agent and ask if I would consider writing a paranormal young adult series. When my agent first told me, I laughed. “Me? Write a young adult? Are you joking?”

Thankfully, I was smart enough to ask for thinking time. Then I called my good friends and asked for advice. The answers I got all sounded pretty much the same, “Are you an idiot? Of course you’ll do it.” Or “Hang up right now, and start writing. Now!”

But I still held back. The thoughts running though my mind were: But I know how to write a contemporary romance. I’m actually getting pretty good at it, climbing the latter of success. Shouldn’t I just stick with what I know I can do and work on that? I’d have to really study up on what makes a young adult novel work if I expect to make this happen. I’d have to put in a few more hours. And then there were my two biggest fears: What if I embarrass myself? What if I try . . . and fail? And then of course, What if they want me to put my leg somewhere that I can’t put it?

I had forgotten how good it felt to stretch. You know, when you’re just a little sore because you had to work just a bit harder? I forgot that learning can be fun. I forgot that like an athlete, cross-training in most anything in life is beneficial. That studying, and building skills in any genre could help me write better, no matter what I’m writing. I forgot what it feels like to come face to face with a challenge. I forgot that every now and then we all need to try something new, to mix things up, to push the fear aside, and just go for it. I forgot that taking a risk is sometimes a risk worth taking.

So how did it turn out for me? In April of 2011, the first book, Born at Midnight, in my Shadow Falls series will hit the bookstores. I’ve completed the second novel, and am busy plotting the third. Already, the foreign market sales tell me I made a wise decision. My friends like to rub it in, too.

Oh, I’m still writing my humorous romantic suspenses. That was another stretch I made. Because after I sold my YA series to St. Martin’s Press, my agent suggested I come up with a new adult romance series to shop around. But to do so, we would have to turn down the offer from the house I was already publishing with. No stranger to rejection, turning down a contract didn’t calm my nerves. I’m happy to say that my next romance series, Don’t Mess With Texas, will be released by Grand Central in late 2011.

For me, stretching was writing in a new genre and writing that new proposal, turning down one offer, without knowing if I’d get another. For non-writers, stretching might mean taking a class, learning to speak French, or going for that promotion at work. It could mean trying for a second child, deciding to date after your divorce, or going on a new diet. Maybe it even means taking a yoga class. My point is, change is scary, but if we want to grow as humans, we gotta learn to stretch and we gotta keep stretching. We can’t let ourselves live in only our comfort zones.

When opportunity knocks, you can’t run to the bathroom and claim you ate bad chicken. You have to answer that door, you have to spit fear in the face; you have to be willing to take risks. And if you open your eyes and see one of your own body parts that’s less than pretty, well, just shut those eyes and keep on stretching. Sooner or later, you might even get that leg where you didn’t think it would go. Remember that to try and fail is better than never trying at all. We can’t win them all, but when we do win … Wow!

Thanks for stopping by. And today, what I’d like to hear from you is: how are you stretching? How do you face the fear of change? What steps are you going to take that will help you grow into a more well-rounded and healthier person?

I’ll be giving away a copy of Shut Up and Kiss Me to one commenter. So make sure you leave a post.

(And the Jaunty Quills are offering two additional posters signed copies of Christie’s Divorced Desperate and Deceived and Divorced Desperate and Dating! Three lucky people will win books.)