The power of watershed moments.
Reading is a risky sport.
It’s much more dangerous than bungee jumping.
I have always believed that on book covers, they should put a warning text like on cigarette packs, something like this,
Reading seriously harms your view of the people around you.
I am addicted to reading dangerous books- that change your life in one sentence, the kind that takes away your innocence chapter by chapter, the kind that educates you for real life.
Books that transform you.
And I exhaustively research their authors.
I did that after reading HOLLY, Stephen King’s latest book.
And my research on the author led me to an old lecture.
1993 lecture
In a 1993 lecture for the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Stephen King listed his hardships before becoming a recognized author.
- The first prize he won was a pen that only worked for a week.
- He had to borrow money to pay for medicine for his children’s ear infections.
- He lived in some ghetto neighborhood
- He even tried writing erotic novels to make $750 a week and get by.
And then, he shared something that would completely change how I look at life.
Weird Synchronicity
Everyone knows that Stephen King threw the story of “Carrie” in the trash and that his wife rescued the nine pages he had written and told him to finish it.
What people don’t know is why he threw it away.
At the time, Stephen wanted money, and Carrie’s story, he knew it wasn’t a short story he could sell quickly to a magazine.
He didn’t want to waste time; he wanted to pay the bills.
Stephen said, “I didn’t feel I had time to write a novel. For me, sitting down and writing a novel is always like a surprise. It feels almost like an unplanned pregnancy.”
Lesson: You have one plan, but the universe has a different one. And it will even use your loved ones to redirect you to that destination.
You have to trust. The universe is 27 billion years older than you 🙂
The theory of watershed moments.
“I don’t know when we talked about the great changes in our lives, whether we are talking about luck, whether we are talking about fate, whether we are talking about God. I know for sure that there are times that come in a person’s life, their watershed moments. They usually come and go fairly rapidly, and everything changes forever after that” — Sthepen King.
For Stephen King, listening to his wife and writing the novel Carrie was a turning point in his life.
Stephen taught me that doing what you must do at the right time is essential, as he did with Carrie. — Seize the window of opportunity, spot the synchronicities, and take advantage of them. And don’t delay, because the windows close after a while.
King says, “A writer’s career is like a plant. The conditions for that plant to grow have to be exactly right. And for many writers, those conditions don’t conspire; in my case, they happen to.”
Lesson: no matter what you do, every professional life is one of those watershed moments.
The difference between becoming the Stephen King of your niche or just another random professional is seeing those moments and using them wisely and with the perfect timing.
The choice and the leap of faith.
After the success of Carrie, Stephen gave a couple more novels to his then-publisher, Bill Thompson.
One day, as they were walking together down Park Avenue toward 52nd Street, they stopped at a traffic light, and Stephen asked him which of the novels he had delivered he liked best.
Bill told him “Second Coming,” which was later renamed Salem’s Lot.
But Bill confessed that he was worried that Stephen would be pigeonholed as a Horror writer if, after Carrie, they came out with a vampire novel.
Stephen thought about it as he crossed from one side of 52nd Street to the other. At that moment, he realized he wasn’t just crossing a street but changing his life.
He would go from being a first-time author who had published one book to launching a brilliant career as a horror writer.
His was the decision.
And so, crossing the Street, he said to Bill, “If they want to call me a horror writer, let them. They can call me anything they want if they don’t call me late to dinner.”
The rest is history.
Lesson: If you don’t want to be late to the table and miss out on your share of the pie, there will come a time when, after following all the synchronicities, the universe asks you to take a leap of faith.
So don’t be afraid, enjoy, and don’t be late for dinner 🙂
A virtual hug
AG
Leave a Reply