Let Me Be Myself, Part Two: The Chapter You Haven’t Written Yet

A while back I wrote about the day I packed a bag. If you missed it, you can read Let Me Be Myself here. This is what happened when I told that story out loud.

Last week I stood in front of a room of intern graduates at the Southern Oregon Goodwill store in North Medford. I had about three minutes.

These were people who had chosen a new direction. Some found their way to us through a Goodwill coach. Some through a friend or family member who believed in them. All of them had just finished something hard.

So I told them about that day.

Twenty-two years of trying to make someone else happy at the expense of myself. A sticker on the refrigerator that said we only get one life. A bag packed in an afternoon. A song I’d never heard, played a dozen times while I drove around trying to figure out where I’d sleep that night.

That course correction saved my life.

I’d written about that day before. I’d never said it out loud to a room of strangers. Then I looked at the graduates and said: So do you. You get to write your own story too.

What writing mysteries taught me

Here’s what I know after six novels. The best part of writing a book is always the chapter I haven’t written yet. That’s when a character tells the writer what they want to do next.

Life works the same way. You get to choose to smile or frown. To be kind or mean. To show up for work or not. Nobody hands you a script.

Every graduate in that room had made a choice like mine. They wanted a different path. They wanted to change their lives. Then they had to keep choosing it. Every single morning.

Psychologist Angela Duckworth has a word for that. Before she was a researcher, she taught seventh grade math. She noticed her strongest students weren’t always the ones who seemed the smartest. So she went looking for what really predicts success. She studied cadets at West Point. Kids in the National Spelling Bee. High school students in Chicago.

You might guess it’s talent. Or money. Or an easy road. It wasn’t. In Chicago, the students who graduated weren’t the ones with the easiest path. They were the ones who kept going, even when she accounted for family income. Passion and persistence over the long haul.

She calls it grit. Her TED Talk on it is one of the most watched ever. Six minutes. Worth every one of them.

That room was full of grit.

Each of them left with a button that reads, “Ask me about my Goodwill story.” Because... they have one worth telling.

The chapter after that

Here’s something I learned as a writer. The best chapters are never the first ones. They’re the ones that come after the character decides who they’re going to be.

That’s where those graduates are right now. Maybe it’s where you are too.

So go write your next chapter. And if you don’t like how it turns out, remember. You get to write the chapter after that, too.

What’s the next chapter you’re writing? I’d love to hear it in the comments.