Today, I welcome my good friend Maria Savva to the blog. She is an author from London who has written many novels and short stories in various genres. Here is Maria’s Character Crossroads post, with her reflection on the turning points that we all face in our lives.
I think life is made up of tiny little choices that affect the way our life works out. Whether our lives are down to fate or destiny, or the result of our choices is a whole discussion in itself and I don’t think I really know the answer. I explored the concept of making choices that affect the rest of our lives in my novel The Dream, which is a fantasy and includes a time travel element where one of the characters goes back in time and gets the chance to change her mind. In real life, of course, this doesn’t happen.
I think that life is a mosaic of many different choices, and when we come to a pivotal stage and have to make a choice one way or another we can call it a crossroads. After all, if we’d taken a different route our lives could have turned out completely different… or would they? Back to the question as to whether fate plays its part.
I’ve always been fascinated in this type of thing. When I was a child, my father was offered a job opportunity in New York, which he turned down, but if he’d taken it I would have grown up there. Then later, my parents’ best friends moved to Australia and my parents decided to go to the Australian High Commission to get some application forms. They nearly made the move there, but that didn’t happen. Consequently I grew up in London. How much different would my life have been if I’d grown up in a different country?
In my own life, career choices have always been a struggle because I have many interests and am not very good at making decisions! I applied to hairdressing college when I was sixteen and I was accepted there. At that time I was torn between whether to go on and take A-Levels at school or go to hairdressing college. I remember quite clearly that crossroads moment of writing to the college and going to post the letter rejecting their offer, telling them that I would be going on to study my A-Levels instead. Then, there was another crossroads moment when I decided to go to college to do my A-Levels rather than staying on at my school’s sixth form. I’d been accepted at the sixth form to study Art, History, and English at A-Level. I changed my mind and went to college instead where I studied Economics, Business Studies, and English A-Levels. Quite different choices. I told you I wasn’t good at making decisions.
I suppose my life could have turned out differently if I didn’t post that letter to the hairdressing college and I went there instead. I would have been a hairdresser instead of a lawyer. Would I have enjoyed it more? I don’t suppose I’ll ever know. At the end of the day, though, it’s great that we have so many choices. It does make life more interesting.
For more about Maria Savva and her writing, please visit her official website.
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You can find Maria’s novel, The Dream on Amazon
Blurb: Lynne cannot shake her feelings of dread; her dreams tell her she is making a terrible mistake, she must not marry Adam. But, how can she believe the dream? Lynne and Adam have shared their lives for three years now. She is certain she loves him.
It is not that love, which her dream warns against.
It doesn’t matter that she loves this man she will soon marry. If she marries him, the voice in her dream says her soul mate will die. Her true love will perish.
Soon, Lynne’s world is transformed and becomes almost unrecognisable, except for the déjà vu. Time doesn’t seem to mean much anymore, and things are not quite as they seem. As her world spins out of control, Lynne must sort out what’s real and what isn’t to fulfill her destiny.
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Thanks so much for featuring me here, Stacy! And, your new website looks great, by the way 🙂
Thanks for the great post, Maria! I thoroughly enjoyed The Dream!
Thank you, Stacy! Great to hear that 🙂 x
Maria, I often ponder these same questions of destiny and choice. Perhaps it’s a writer thing?
Funny how your life went in a sort of opposite direction of mine. I’d started college with the intent of studying English or Psychology. Or maybe law. I couldn’t decide. I didn’t settle in well, in part because I completely lacked direction, and wound up going to cosmetology school. My mother owned a salon and I’d pretty much grown up with the business. While working as a stylist, I decided to take more college courses. I was torn between English and health, and wound up getting my BS in natural health with the intent of starting a consulting business for health and nutrition. But instead I started writing health-related articles for an Internet site, which lead back to writing as a career. So I wonder if I wasn’t always supposed to be here, regardless of the decisions I made.
We’ll probably always ponder that path not taken.
The Dream is a fun book! The story really made me question fate and choice.
That is more of less opposite, but strangely similar too. You & I seem to have a lot of things in common, Darcia!
My sister actually went on to do hairdressing at the college that I was supposed to have gone to, so I did get to see what it would have been like in a way. Maybe it’s true that we can take lots of different paths but end up where we were meant to be?
Thanks for your comment about The Dream 🙂 It was the first fantasy type novel I wrote. The one I’m trying to find time to work on at the moment is also a fantasy, but a bit more like the Far Away In Time story from my upcoming collection… more magical and other-worldly.
Ooh, I love the sound of ‘magical and other-worldly’! Far Away In Time is a fabulous collection of stories.
So interesting to hear from Maria. I agree that there are lots of choices we make in life and each one impacts our life in ways we don’t know. Sometimes the decisions are big- like moving or going to school, but sometimes they are smaller like taking a different route home from work. I always wonder about the impacts our choices have on our lives. Reading this post made me curious to read The Dream. It sounds interesting. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Thanks, Jess 🙂 Yes, I totally agree. There are lots of different little choices we make each day. I suppose it’s wondering about all those things that keeps us writers busy LOL If you get the chance to read The Dream I hope you enjoy it. It fitted in well with Stacy’s theme of crossroads, my main character, Lynne, is definitely at a very important crossroads in her life!
Thanks, Darcia! And, if I can ever stop rearranging the sentences, it should be published soon LOL 🙂