Dreams do come true, even if you achieve a goal that wasn’t initially your dream. What? The depth and breadth of emotions I’ve experienced lately, and continue to experience, are at once overwhelming and comforting.
I can’t remember a time when there wasn’t a book in my hand, under my pillow, on the nightstand, the coffee table, or next to my chair. My childhood home was around the corner from the public library and I utilized it as though it might disappear before I read each and every book. And, for me, there are so many sensory associations with books and reading. A different topic for another time.
I never had aspirations to be any sort of writer. I shied away from writing stuff like articles for the camp newspaper, or heaven forbid, the school newspaper. Thinking back, I probably felt my writing ability was adequate. I took the obligatory writing courses in college, but the nature of being an English major involves writing loads of papers anyway so why take more writing? Let me read!
How did I learn to write? Do I have some sort of degree in writing? No, I don’t. I mostly learned by trial and error. And with the help of a great deal of reading. Wait, reading is able to help your writing? Why, yes! Reading is the path to many wonderful things! In addition to traveling places without leaving your comfy chair in the living room, reading lays the foundation for a rich and varied vocabulary. It allows one to appreciate how different authors write.
I’m not going to get into a teaching mode. I became a writer in spite of myself, in spite of my lack of self-confidence, in spite of any lengthy formal training. It took me a long time to realize I wanted and needed to write. I can’t imagine not writing. It helps me to clear my head and to put things into perspective. And, somewhere along the line, I began to believe that my writing had merit.
Though I never felt I was a creative writer, I discovered I was by virtue of writing poetry. That was an eye opener. I, the alone Girl, the girl who was either bouncing a ball, gripping a tennis racket, swimming, reading the encyclopedia (more on that in the future), or any book…wrote a poem. And it didn’t stink. It followed that I wrote more poems. I learned how deeply my emotions ran. Blah, blah, blah…self-awakening period of my life.
One of my favorite reading genres since I can remember is mystery or what some may call detective fiction. I do read true crime on occasion but I thrive on mystery. My goal isn’t to figure things out as I’m reading. It’s to let the characters take me on their adventure. So, for me, it followed that I felt I could create one of those adventures.
I have yet to finish any of the three I’ve started. When the non-fiction project moved into my head, I allowed it to take up residence. It matured and finally left home. Now I have more ideas to nurture. It will happen. I will achieve my true dream of publishing a mystery novel. And I’m setting a series of deadlines for myself.
Let me share an anecdote (like I don’t do this every moment of virtually every day)…I, like many, was a big fan of the tv show M*A*S*H. I had a love/hate relationship with Dr. Charles Emerson Winchester but every once in a while, he knocked my socks off. Charles is treating a patient who has lost the use of his right hand, his primary hand. Trouble is that he’s a pianist. Charles brings him some sheet music for just the left hand and the patient balks. Charles explains, “Your hand may be stilled, but your gift cannot be silenced…”. The patient replies that he no longer has a gift.
Charles then says, “Wrong! Because the gift does not lie in your hands. I have hands, David. Hands that can make a scalpel sing. More than anything in my life I wanted to play, but I do not have the gift. I can play the notes, but I cannot make the music.” Writing is more than creating words. For some of us, it’s a drive within the deepest part of our souls. If we don’t act on it, we wither and don’t thrive. And because I’m a sensory person (very tactile), I write with a pen. Letting it sweep across the paper is so satisfying.
When it’s said that you shouldn’t give up on your dreams, it’s true. But be reasonable. One of my dreams back in the early 1980s was to marry Tom Selleck. Not reasonable. Writing a book. Reasonable. Let your light shine, whatever it may be.
“Dreams don’t work unless you do.”
Stories Are For Eternity 