Change Is a Devilish Wench

We've got a lot of road work going on where I live.  Turn lanes are being added.  Work crews are out digging around ditches in the median and clearing out drains.  Brand new asphalt has been poured on the roads and the drive to and from work, aside from the traffic, is a smoother affair.  Good changes.  Needed changes.  And yet changes like these take time.

I hate change. 

My office at work is being renovated.  And though the plan is to give the small space a cozier atmosphere, free of clutter, I have my shelves, my binders and I don't want that to change.  I liked things the way they were.  Everything was at my fingertips.  I didn't need or ask for this mania.  But life is change.  Life changes from one second to the next, with or without our permission.   

I fight change as long as I can and then, only because I have no other choice, I accept things I cannot change... like change.  I've had loads of experience doing this growing up, moving from one Army post to the next, leaving friends behind, entering new schools, and on and on until I finally found myself entering my own children in new schools and so on and so on.  Change is an devilish wench, albeit a necessary evil.  Get ye gone!

And yet from the day we're born, to the day we die, we're changing.  Without change, we cannot grow.  Without digging out the drains and cleaning out ditches in the median, the road ahead of us will flood.  It will be murky, rocky and steep.

Viewing the changes I see on the highway, I'm reminded of my manuscript, the avenues of plot laid out with smooth asphalt S curves or W plots, satisfying intersections of motivation and conflict veering off with turn lanes/subplots.  The detours we face in revisions and edits, road blocks/walls, highways and byways pose a need for change before achieving that ultimate polish that sets a manuscript apart.  Scenes cut.  Secondary characters axed.  All in the name of improvement, marketability, professionalism.  Good changes.  Needed changes.

Fall is here.  Winter is coming.  And in the face of change, I'm bucking like an unbroken Mustang.  Change is good.  Sometimes change is needed.  But oh I'd sure like to give that devilish wench hell in the meantime.

Are you facing any changes?  How do you handle change?   

Katherine Bone
DUKE BY DAY, ROGUE BY NIGHT 10/29 Crimson Romance
www.katherinebone.com