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.