The Size of Your Dreams

Every aspiring writer dreams of becoming a bestselling author. It’s the carrot that leads the donkey on. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just a carrot.

Then comes real life.

Few successful writers I admire were independently wealthy when they started out. Nor had they been comfortably retired lawyers dreaming of becoming the next John Grisham. No. Usually they had a job. Most times it was a job they didn’t like, which is why they dreamed of doing something different. In some cases, they also had a marriage and kids. Those were the three most common obstacles. Rare was the writer who had enjoyed the luxury of going to school for writing or had studied literature in college.

What they all had in common was a dream.

But how enduring is your dream? How much are you willing to sacrifice for it? How much is too much? Until what point will you not give up?

Those who succeeded were the ones who never gave up. Because success didn’t come with a time stamp on it. To succeed you had to forget about success altogether and just focus on the next task at hand. Recently my partner quoted someone he admires: that person said, “Don’t do your best. Do what’s necessary.”

Meaning, concentrate on the fight and not the battle. If you think about it, most mothers in the world do, do just that. Only no one praises them for it or quotes them on it. It really isn’t that hard to do either. It’s just a question of committing to finishing something you started.

Therefore, close to sixty, I re-examined what content I had to see if I could rewrite my story from the Lisa Cron stand point. A lot had to go. Much more had to be written. I also had to digest that traditional publishing would never touch me based on too-high word count alone, so no, I would die as a “bestselling author.” But thank God, along this journey, I had picked up another, more rewarding reason to write than just the fulfillment of becoming rich, or a bestseller: I dreamed of influencing other young woman through my story to never give up. Never stop fighting. Never lose the hope of achieving their goals.

With that being my new objective, I certainly couldn’t give up at this point. Thus, what would I do? Self-publish? Me? Institution approval seeking Indian that I was? Self-publishing was about the most stigmatized venture out there. It had no rules or regulations. People were publishing absolute bilge with no one to stop them. Had I spent sixteen years of my life to stoop to self-publishing?

Well, it was either that or putting my book in the drawer. And who said I had to publish bilge? Even if I self-published, no one was stopping me from making triple sure that my book didn’t come full of typos. That I put forth a solid story, and that I only shared my best product. As long as I could guarantee that the quality of my story wouldn’t embarrass me, what did I have to fear? Failure? Who was watching me, anyway?

After sixteen years of writing and rewriting, I didn’t feel like the nearing-fifty loser I had been when I had started out. I had never ever lacked for grit, but I now also had more self confidence. As an Indian, I firmly believed that most of success came through dogged hard work, anyway. My novel was not lacking in that department. However, some part of success was written in the stars, and that part was up to God. What I could control, I had fulfilled. If, for some reason, the whole venture was one big lesson, then I needed to learn it.

But opting not to publish after coming this far was like having run a marathon and quitting during the last mile. My book required a comprehensive proofread though, and given my expensive mistake with my so-called editors, I couldn’t risk hiring another dud. I waited, convinced that if it was my time to publish, God would indicate the steps.

Do you feel like you have reached the end of the road on a project, but something is stopping you from pulling the trigger to execute it?