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| (The drawing of my heroine was done by me. The books were done by amazing people.) |
Right now, I am preparing the final edit of my manuscript. After that, I will officially be on submission. This has led to a lot of introspection and reminiscing on my part, most of which is interesting only to myself. It also inspired me to write about some of my hopes and fears during this process. I’ve been meaning to start blogging again. What better time than the present, and what better topic than my current state of mind?
Today, I want to talk about impossible dreams. Sounds like a scary subject, doesn’t it? Well, it certainly is for me. Perhaps more than anything else in the world, I hate the idea of having a cherished dream I will never achieve. That fear has held me back in the past, and it lingers like a shadow over my present.
What if I never write a novel good enough to publish? What if I never see my name on a book cover? This is the biggest dream I have, and it may be too big for me. At best, it’s improbable, and it will take a great deal of time and effort to achieve. At worst, it’s the towering giant in my life I will never slay.
Then I remember this is exactly what my manuscript is about. It is about slaying giants, and dragons, and all sorts of shadows—some twisted and evil, some not as evil as they seem at first glance. Most of all, my manuscript is about an impossible dream.
The heroine of my story wants something she cannot have. This is vital to the premise of the manuscript. (It also dictated the setting, and almost everything else about it.) She absolutely cannot be what she wants to be. It’s impossible, because the occupation no longer exists in her world. What’s worse, she can’t be anything like it, because her society tells her she must do one thing and one thing only. She can’t be a hero, because she has to get married and keep house.
Then, impossibly, her dream comes true. She becomes exactly what she wants: a knight straight out of a fairy tale. Of course, this fairy tale is not as perfect as she hoped. (I am not foolish enough to think being a published writer is a rose garden full of sparkledust, either.) But what drew me to my heroine was that ridiculous dream of hers, and how she kept dreaming even though she knew it could never happen. In the immortal words of Goethe, “I love those who yearn for the impossible.” Every day, my heroine reminds me of the importance of dreaming on an epic scale, and doing what I feel called to do at any cost, with as much bravery as I can muster.
I will keep writing. I will try, and I will fail. And voices both inside and outside my head will continue to say the odds are against me, I will never get what I want, and I shouldn’t bother trying. But the ability to ignore those voices and press on toward a goal is the one thing that can make the impossible a reality.
Personally, I want to see more of the impossible made real. Which is why I keep writing in the face of inevitable rejection, and my own fears.
It’s a little crazy, but it’s one thing my heroine and I have utterly in common.
And if you’re a writer with unrealized dreams of publication, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
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