Tumblr post #7 (June 2016)
They say that there is power in both the tongue and the pen. Speak it until it comes into existence. Write it down so that it becomes a personal contract for you to oblige. In doing so, you have power over it and are no longer leaving it up to chance. You are manifesting it. You are the one who is in control and the universe is setting things into motion so that what you say or write will come into existence…and so on and so forth.
When I hear people talk like this, the skeptic in me has a really tough time believing in the notion that just because you say that something will happen, it means that it is binding and nothing can stop it. I say, “Show me the Carfax.” I’m the type of person who, more often than not, needs facts and proof in the pudding before I can go out on faith that I can merely speak or will something to come into existence just because I want it to. That just sounds a little selfish to me. For me to want something to happen means that something else will not happen either for me or for someone else.
Cause and Effect.
Yin and Yang.
Newton’s Third Law of Motion.
And if we all just went around saying that this will happen or that will happen, and this or that did happen, then we’d all be in a convoluted tug of war with any and everyone around us. And that just sounds silly to me.
Yet…Here I am. Giving in to the anecdotes and thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is something to this whole manifesting thing; that perhaps speaking or writing something into existence is only a part of the larger effort to make something happen. To get something accomplished. To get a book written. To have that book be successful.
So I started an experiment.
I pulled out my journal and started writing down what I hoped to accomplish with this book. No…what I will accomplish with this book. I wrote about how this book will be on someone’s list of top books that every Black woman should read in her lifetime; how it will be praised by Oprah and picked up by a major New York City publishing house; how it will be so moving that Heben and Tracy will want to interview me on their Another Round podcast; and how it will be canonized as a vital piece of literature of the Black Millennial Renaissance of the early 21st century.
All of that jazz.
And yes, a lot of it is wishful thinking. And yes, a lot of it is far-fetched. And yes, I’m not even halfway through this thing and there are already holes in my story that need to be filled as soon as I begin the editing process. But I am oddly hopeful that this story will eventually come together and take the world by storm. Or at least take your world by storm. Either way, I recognize that even though I’ve been working on this novel since October 2015, it is still in its infancy and it has a long way to go before it blossoms into something that I know it has the potential to become.
But I believe in the power of the glow up. Ugly ducklings have blossomed time and time again, and this little duckling of a novel will do the same. And though I still don’t fully believe that merely speaking something into existence will make it happen, I think it’s worth including the action in my arsenal of things that will make this story come to fruition. It’s worth a shot anyway.
I have nothing to lose…except my pride.
NANCEY B. PRICE 