Surrender, or What I'm Learning From Yoga

Happy First of June! The leaves shine like emerald mirrors and irises stretch feathered petals towards the sun. Ahhhhhh, summer has arrived.

I know I've posted a lot lately about my new Bikram Yoga practice, but I can't help it. Aware as I am that yoga is meant to maximize a mind/body connection, I'm still amazed at how much I take away from each class beyond a strenuous workout.

One of the yoga poses (asanas) is shavasana (corpse pose). The point of this pose is complete relaxation and meditation. It's normally what ends a yoga class.

When leading us through this final pose, my teacher said: "It took me a long time to get shavasana. It's about surrender, and I just didn't understand. Then I realized that trying to understand surrender was the problem. You just have to let go."

Writing requires near absolute surrender. So much of what happens in the craft lies beyond our control.

In a recent conversation with my agent, we discussed the fact that my book could very well be sold as adult or YA; thus, he's doing a big submission to both YA and adult editors.

In many ways this is great news. I do believe my book has broad appeal, it's what could be categorized as "crossover" and my beta readers, both teen and adult, all loved it.

In other ways this news makes me want to go into a fit of nail biting (as so much of this process does). The worry remains that my book could fall into the cracks between YA and adult genres and be dismissed by all editors as not clear enough for its intended audience.

So what's my recourse? Only surrender.



The book will find its way and its readers. All I can do is continue to write, and I remember how much I love the process of creating novels. The rest is out of my hands.

On another note, the New York Times totally stole my last blog post.