How to create when the future is blurry

Sometimes, you can't see a foot in front of your face. Maia shares why that doesn't mean you should stop creating.

This month’s assignment is to connect with our future selves. I did an assignment like this a dozen years back at a business mastermind. After a day spent brainstorming new offerings and marketing plans, we were supposed to show up to the evening cocktail hour dressed as ourselves five years in the future. We were to speak as though we were our future self, acting out the part of the we that would be.

Somehow, I didn’t get the memo.

So I showed up in my day clothes, wrinkled from sitting and grubby from eating a food-truck lunch. Floating about the room were women transformed. Their hair was styled, and their clothes were crisp. One woman was drifting through the clusters, spritzing people with a mister attached to a small, faceted bottle, like the salesperson who brandishes the perfume tester at Macy’s. Another was purposefully framing the scene through the view-finder of a 35mm camera with a ridiculously long telephoto lens.

I felt flustered and caught off guard. How did I not know about this? A friend sidled up and handed me a glass of red wine which I gulped gratefully.

“So Future Maia,” she says. “What have you been up to?”

My mouth opens before my brain can catch up. “I’m just back from my first book tour,” I say. “It’s been exhausting, but I love it. I can’t believe I’m finally an author!”

Five years after this prophetic statement, my first book had just published and I was, indeed, exhausted from a fabulous cross-country book tour.

So I know these futuring exercises are potent.

But I’m so distracted right now. We’re getting our house ready to sell. The political situation in the U.S. has my full attention. When I take up this assignment, straight on, and try to connect with me— even me a few years down the line— I get nothing. Nada. A complete blank. OMG the future is a blank. Am I going to die? What does it mean that I can’t envision it or the “her” who will live it? How can I build a future on the seismic shifts of the present? And is it safe to get on the plane to Japan at the end of the month?

(If you’re picturing me panting and reaching for the lavender essential oil, you’re not too far off.)

But….

When I shift the prompt slightly and ask what my future self will give a shit about, she starts to come into focus. I see my nephews roughhousing with each other; I hear my niece laughing, “Auntie, you may be getting older, but you’re also getting prettier!” (Yes, that’s pretty much a quote from our conversation earlier this week. She pulls off corny incredibly well.) Finn the dog comes over and licks my nose (eeeewwww, stink breath!), and something in me begins to settle. Andrew calls from the kitchen to see if I want tea. I may not know the future, but I know that what will be important is the people (and animals) I love.

Then I ask myself the next question: can I work on this book without thinking about the future? Do I need to worry about what people will want to read in a world I can hardly envision? Can I fall in love with my characters and not worry about what my agent thinks, or if I’ll get a book deal?

Something in me let’s go as these thoughts cross my brain. Some binding falls away. I can breathe again.

So I fill my lungs with air and write…..

Excerpt from Chapter 2

“No, Evie, I can’t come right now,” Viv balanced the phone against her ear with her shoulder as she navigated the stairs up from the subway, holding onto the railing with one hand and an oversized canvas tote with the other.

“Yes, I’m sure it was odd,” Viv tried to make her voice soothing. “It sounds very disturbing. I’ll come see later today. Promise.”

Just beyond the concrete stairwell of the Dyckman Street subway station the cerulean sky above Fort Tryon Park beckoned. It was one of Viv’s favorite places to draw, not only because it had a startling variety of botanicals but also because it was exactly 66.6 acres, an odd fact a docent had told them on a high school field trip, which provided no end of amusement for Viv and Evie when they were teenagers searching for signs and symbols. She tried to distract Evie with the memory. “I just got to the ‘devil’s park.’ I really do need to go.”

But Evie was far from finished. Typical Evie, she either had nothing to say or you couldn’t shut her up. There was no middle ground with her, ever. Viv stepped off the path, out of the way of the others exiting the station. The grass was springy under her oxfords, and she bounced on her toes a bit as Evie ground out, “You’re not listening to me, Viv!” and launched into her third rendition of the story as if it would become sensible if told in a different way.

There was nothing for it, Viv was either going to have to wait it out or hang up on her. Choosing to be a good cousin, she mentally turned down the volume on the Evie fairytale and began instead to catalogue what she could see in bloom. Dianthus subacaulis. Digitalis grandiflora. Actaea racemose. Salvia sylvestris. Scientific names. She chanted them in her mind, a mantra of reason to withstand Evie’s mystical drivel. Occasionally, Viv murmured a hmmm or yes, but mostly she had tuned her cousin out. She was trying to identify the Papaver cultivars (Bolero, Harlem, and Royal Wedding), having just murmured what she thought was a well-timed ummmm, when Evie voice cranked up to warp speed. Viv scrambled to focus on the words in the rising crescendo. She had just caught your mother, when Evie screeched Stop. Ignoring. Me! You’re so fucking patronizing!

Five years from now, will Evie still be talking to Viv? Will Viv still be a snot?

Actually, these are just the types of questions that calm my soul right now.

P.S. Wanna write with me? My next openings for coaching and editing are coming up in May. Drop me an email at maia@maiatoll.com if you’re interested!