I don't know about you, but I personally don't like change. I've never found it easy. I suspect that even after passing through the myriad of changes and difficult circumstances encountered by us all throughout life, it won't get any easier.
However, lately I've discovered that there's an upside to living in the midst of change (apart from now having more interesting topics to talk about at a dinner party).
During the past few years, I've been most definitely moved out of my comfort zone - having four children in five years (can hardly believe it myself!), moving to a new city five hours' drive away from extended family and friends, and enduring four managers in the space of just nine months in my new job.
But after all the dust has settled, I now find a new strength and depth I didn't realise I possessed. While I wasn't looking, I've become a more rounded (not literally, lol!) and empathic person.
Understandably, this has huge benefits for my writing. Where perhaps I may have previously struggled in exploring topics outside my own relatively narrow realm of experience, I find I can now bring a more believable insight to various characters and scenarios.
In the novel I'm writing at the moment, I'm in the middle of describing a fifteen-year-old girl's experience of losing her boyfriend in a car accident. This is completely removed from Blue Freedom (my previous published novel), which was comparatively all "cocktails on the beach at sunset", but I'm surprised to find myself being able to really get inside the girl's head/character, imagine just what it would feel like to be suddenly hurtled into your worst nightmare.
Perhaps this ability simply comes with maturity - I'm now 34, but was only in my early twenties when I began writing Blue Freedom.
But I'd like to also think that the mosaic of experiences I've encountered in life - many of them stretching and challenging - have also contributed to a greater insight as a writer.
I would encourage other writers to not always resist being pushed out of their comfort zones, but to embrace the greater depth it can bring to them as individuals and to their creative craft.
However, lately I've discovered that there's an upside to living in the midst of change (apart from now having more interesting topics to talk about at a dinner party).
During the past few years, I've been most definitely moved out of my comfort zone - having four children in five years (can hardly believe it myself!), moving to a new city five hours' drive away from extended family and friends, and enduring four managers in the space of just nine months in my new job.
But after all the dust has settled, I now find a new strength and depth I didn't realise I possessed. While I wasn't looking, I've become a more rounded (not literally, lol!) and empathic person.
Understandably, this has huge benefits for my writing. Where perhaps I may have previously struggled in exploring topics outside my own relatively narrow realm of experience, I find I can now bring a more believable insight to various characters and scenarios.
In the novel I'm writing at the moment, I'm in the middle of describing a fifteen-year-old girl's experience of losing her boyfriend in a car accident. This is completely removed from Blue Freedom (my previous published novel), which was comparatively all "cocktails on the beach at sunset", but I'm surprised to find myself being able to really get inside the girl's head/character, imagine just what it would feel like to be suddenly hurtled into your worst nightmare.
Perhaps this ability simply comes with maturity - I'm now 34, but was only in my early twenties when I began writing Blue Freedom.
But I'd like to also think that the mosaic of experiences I've encountered in life - many of them stretching and challenging - have also contributed to a greater insight as a writer.
I would encourage other writers to not always resist being pushed out of their comfort zones, but to embrace the greater depth it can bring to them as individuals and to their creative craft.
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