Last week I spent a couple of hours presenting the Horizon series to an interested third party. It was so much fun to talk about the story arc I’d created, my beloved characters and how they’d developed over time, and the major themes I was interested in exploring through my writing.

When I finished, he asked me whether I’d considered making different choices around particular plot points, or taking any of the action in a different direction. Essentially, he wanted to know how I decided which choices were the right ones for my story. From that conversation, I wrote a blog post titled Have You Lost the Plot? While the post focuses on writing craft, and how to make sure a manuscript doesn’t veer too far from the intended story, I realized I could have easily been talking about life.

Living intentionally is a bit like working on a manuscript. As we craft the narrative of our own lives, we have to have a vision for our story. We have to make choices that support this vision. And, we have to allow room for the unexpected plot twists that will inevitably take us by surprise.

When I feel like I’ve lost the plot, so to speak, it usually means I need to adjust my choices so they better support the story I want to tell.