Letter: Dear FOBO

lizshine74by lizshine74

In Letters.

Letter: Dear FOBO

Dear FOBO,

I just learned you existed yesterday. Well, I learned you are a thing with a name, which also means there must be countless other people out there who struggle with you.
Fear of better options–you make me keep switching POV in my stories. You make me abandon entire drafts to work on that fresh new idea. You make it impossible for me to get a single word written until I’ve mad a list of writing goals for the day, because–hey, when there are so many possibilities–why not start by making a sandwich?
FOBO, you have the best of intentions. You come from this desire to make great art, to make that art better and better. But you keep me from hanging out in the now, struggling through the problems and rough patches of a project.
Hey–Can we make a deal?
When I set my writing timer, could you go hang out somewhere else?
Because when I’m in it, I want to be in it. While I might decide later to make some important change to the narrative, I have to be in it first, follow it from start to finish.
So, I’m setting my timer. Go play somewhere else for a while.
Respectfully,
Liz
lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA in the USA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She has published in Shark Reef, Dual Coast, and Blue Crow Magazine. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.