I find the concept of serendipity to be fascinating though often not well understood. According to Richard Eyre in his stellar book, Spiritual Serendipity: Cultivating and Celebrating the Art of the Unexpected, serendipity is “that quality of mind which, through awareness, sagacity, and good fortune, allows one to frequently discover something good while seeking something else.”
You could even say that serendipity is the counter-balance to discipline that I wrote about here.  As writers, being in the ‘serendipity zone’ can be an awesome experience.  For example, one of my writer friends, Joe D’Agnese recently recommended to me Ray Bradbury’s book of essays about the writing life entitled, Zen in the Art of Writing, in which one of his stories clearly indicates the degree to which he often stayed in the serendipity zone.
One perfect example started when his wife and him walked along the beach and came upon the remains of an old pier that looked to Bradbury’s imagination as a dinosaur’s skeleton, so a night or two later he wrote a story about a dinosaur who mistakes a lighthouse fog horn for another dinosaur’s call, who upon finding out the error, dies of a broken heart.  Okay, neat story, right?
But that’s really just the beginning. The story appeared in The Saturday Evening Post soon after, and two years later was made into a film.
The story was also read by John Huston who promptly called Bradbury to ask him to write the screenplay for his Moby Dick, which lead Bradbury to serendipitously reexamine the life of Melville and Jules Verne in an essay. When that essay was read by the folks organizing the 1964 New York World’s Fair, they put Bradbury in charge of conceptualizing the entire upper floor of the United States Pavilion.
But his serendipitous journey isn’t over yet. Because of the Pavilion, the Disney organization hired him to help plan the dreams that went into Spaceship Earth at Epcot Center where he crammed in a history of mankind, and of course, he had to include something about dinosaurs as well.
All that from one strange idea that started on that California beach. But it took more than the idea, right?  It also took someone who was awake and aware enough to follow that idea to see where it might go — to write down the story, then send the story in, to follow up when the story lead to a movie deal and then a screenplay opportunity.
So, how can we as visionary writers optimize this magical power of serendipity?

Tapping into Serendipity

To answer that question, let’s go back to Eyre’s definition — well, actually he borrowed the definition from Horace Walpole, the eighteenth-century British writer who coined the term, serendipity.

Serendipity: that quality of mind which, through awareness, sagacity, and good fortune, allows one to frequently discover something good while seeking something else.

It starts in the mind by setting an intention to become aware and awake enough to attract to you the conditions that lead to serendipitous events happening on a regular basis.  That intention setting includes believing that there is such a thing as serendipity and serendipitous opportunities all around us, and that our job is to maintain “awareness, sagacity, and good fortune.”
Think about it. How many other people walked by the very same remains of that pier over the years — hundreds, maybe thousands.  But it was Bradbury and his imagination that started the ball rolling.
I’ve seen the same in my writing careers though not quite at the level of Bradbury (well, not yet anyway).  When I was regularly working on Project Purpose: to write and publish articles about people who were living purposeful and meaningful lives, my ability to attract the perfect next purpose profile became uncanny. I remember once interviewing John Robbins for an assignment for Yoga Journal. Towards the end of the interview, he mentioned that his 15-year old son, Ocean, had just started his own non profit called YES.
That little tidbit of information lead me to writing a couple different articles about Ocean Robbins, that then lead to another candidate for Project Purpose.  Serendipity doesn’t always work quite so linearly. I certainly didn’t know or even plan to have John provide me with my next story lead, but it happened, then and quite often at other times.
I believe that serendipity can be developed as well. As Bradbury points out in Zen in the Art of Writing, feeding one’s Muse is an important part of increasing serendipity in your life. Such feeding can include doing things to break yourself out of your routines, taking time for Artist Dates, reading outside your normal genres, setting aside special time to ramble and brainstorm new ideas. The more you feed your Muse the more it will return to you great ideas that, with the proper amount of trust and action applied, can lead you into your own ‘serendipity zone.’

Now It’s Your Turn

What ways have you found to increase serendipity in your life? Where has serendipity shown up at just the right time to move you forward in your writing career? What do you feel blocks moments of serendipity?  Let me hear from you.