Stacey Miller*, book publicist extraordinaire, believes in flexibility, responding to and anticipating trends. Yes, respect for tradition helps us avoid repeating mistakes, but it can also be stagnating. It prevents us from moving forward, from growing.

Flexibility, change, evolution—for many of us, certainly for me, these are unsettling words. It’s comforting to carry on business as usual, live our daily lives, do the same things over and over. Rely on experience, little guesswork, and no risk, involved. Change means opening yourself to possibility—including the possibility of failure.

For a fiction writer, change, flexibility, evolution ought to be easy. Every project is new, and publishing, as everyone knows, is in flux. Most of us write on speculation—unless you’re a bestselling mega-hit wonder, like Stephenie Meyer or Stephen King, you have no guarantees—the possibility of rejection high, that you’ll feel like a failure yet higher.

So why bother? Why take a chance?

Good question, one I ask myself all the time. The mantra writers usually cling to: I have to write. My life depends on it. Hyperbole aside, it’s a self-serving lie. If I so chose, like any writer, I could give up writing, well, maybe not writing, but fiction writing surely. Let’s face it: the world can afford to lose a few novelists, a few hundred, a few thousand, easily.

No, my life does not depend upon writing. But my psyche does. Funny thing is, the uncertainty drives me. Publishing my next novel, if I’m lucky, if I write a good enough book, will happen—or won’t. As long as the project lives, possibility abounds. I have hope.

The world changes, evolves, in a flash. It’s hard to keep track, hard to keep up. The strident march of technology often feels overwhelming. Of course people are scared.

And yet.

Sure, it’s harder now to succeed in old-fashioned ways, harder to publish a book, harder to sell anything. Yet, if we seize the moment, take a chance on a new venture, open our hearts and minds, stay flexible, allow ourselves to evolve, ignore the birdy in our head, telling us to give up, forget it, invest in something less risky, we can do almost anything. We can reach heights we only dreamed of before.

Today, the world is full of possibility. We have hope. We’re finally free.

What have you taken a chance on? What will you take a chance on tomorrow? Please leave a comment.

*Read about Stacey’s terrific new book, 101 Recipes for Microwave Mug Cakes—recently featured on the Rachel Ray Show.

In a true story I heard recently, a teenage girl complained to her mom that she’d been having trouble achieving an orgasm. It wasn’t fair, the girl said. Boys have all the fun. Could Mom give her some tips?

This candid talk resulted in a genuine heart-to-heart, a true Kodak moment—and I applaud them. Really, I do. Had my teenage daughter come to me with that complaint—while I’d love to say that, calling on maturity and deep inner wisdom, I’d have answered honestly, maybe given a mock demo (hey, if you’re going to imagine, might as well go all the way)—the truth is, I probably would have told her to ask one of her girlfriends. Or look it up in a book. Or try Google. I mean, seriously, what’s a search engine for?

I know, I know: It’s a parent’s responsibility to ensure that our teens, if they’re having sex, are, in all ways, protected. Moms need to know the intimate details of their kids’ lives so they can ferret out trouble. To grow and flourish, all close relationships, between parent and child, husband and wife, or friend and friend, rely on a certain degree of intimacy. To truly be close to another person, we have to open up, share, allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Still, a teenage girl asking her mom for advice on reaching orgasm? Sorry. TMI.

Today, nothing is sacred. No information is too shameful, too private or too intimate to share. I’m not talking about Kim Kardashian posting sexually explicit videos on the Net or former gal-pals of Tiger Woods sharing lurid text messages. Nor am I referring to exhibitionists who post uncensored 24/7 podcasts or vlogs of themselves on their website.

I mean regular people, who, before the dawn of this obsessively open  culture, kept their private info, well, private. In the Neolithic age, when I was a kid, people hid everything. You didn’t talk about post-partum depression, for instance; you popped a pill. If your husband strayed, your kids were in trouble, your family faced financial ruin, a relative suffered from alcoholism or mental disease—you were on your own. If you suffered, for the most part, you suffered in silence—a tough life for people who needed support.

People who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, open up to others talked to their therapist. Early talk shows, a stand-in for legit psychotherapy, encouraged guests to talk openly; over time, as guests shared increasingly personal details with soothing hosts like Oprah, we viewers grew accustomed to listening, thus normalizing our nascent impulse to mirror the talk show guests we admired and tell all. Now, porn queens become overnight stars, Desperate Housewives rake in millions for humiliating themselves on TV and social networks, like mean-girl cliques, practically force us, if we hope to be recognized as one of the gang, to spill our guts on a “wall.”

In the old days, we barely knew our next-door neighbors. Now we’re on intimate terms with our mail carrier and the local dry-cleaning clerk. Call me old-fashioned: I’m not interested in hearing the gory details about childbirth or a grisly account of any medical procedure involving bodily fluids or blood. I don’t want to hear about your toilet feats (color, size or consistency) or your problems with incontinence or gas. I prefer to hear nothing, zero, nada, zilch, about your sex life, beyond it’s OK or it’s not (then only in particular cases). If you get trashed and puke your guts out or bang your boss, your boss’s wife or some girl or guy you met in an alley, bully for you—if you’re happy, I’m happy. But, please, don’t tell me about it. Frankly, I don’t want to know.