Ever since I heard VCFA faculty member Miciah Bay Gault give her lecture on luck & writing in January, I haven’t stopped thinking about it. So much of our “success” as writers can hinge on luck. She asked us to write down whether or not we think of ourselves as lucky. And whatever we wrote, she said, “You’re probably right.”

Next, she cited a study by Dr. Richard Wiseman in which two people were tasked with walking to a cafe, ordering a coffee, and waiting—all in a staged environment with actors. One participant recounted seeing money on the sidewalk on his way in, chatting up the barista, and exchanging business cards with the businessman sitting beside him. Another participant walked right past the money, ordered her coffee, and sat unobtrusively, later relating that “it had been an uneventful morning.”

The moral of this study did strike a bit of introvert panic in me, as someone who doesn’t naturally strike up conversations with strangers. But beyond framing luck as a function of extroversion, I think of it as that slippery place where tenacity, faith, and privilege converge. Where so much is out of your control, and yet so much is in your control. Sometimes it takes shifting your perspective to see the opportunities in front of you.

Jamie

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