Today I want to hear about you.
What’s the biggest dream of your life? Are you still holding onto it? Did you make it a reality?
Or did you let it go?
Write a note about your big dream, and send it to me here (or if you’re a subscriber, simply hit reply to this email.)
Dreams are fragile things, so I will publish your writing (along with your name and location) in next week’s blog installment ONLY if you’ve given me permission. (If you wish to share it with me only, please know I read and respond to every message and will keep your dream safe.)
I’ll get us started…
In 2011, the Dream Giver dropped The Dream into my life: the desire to be a published writer. And it made sense because maybe I had something to say and the knack for saying it too.
I clutched The Dream to my chest and wrote. Soon, though, I let it float away from me. It was hard work in lonely waters, and I had other tuggings on my life—different jobs—to keep me busy and pay me now.
But like a nighttime dream too profound to dissolve, The Dream resurfaced in 2014. I did the right things to accomplish it, and I checked items off the to-do lists of those in the industry: join a writing group, attend one or two writing conferences a year, read books on the craft, listen to authors’ podcasts, write a weekly blog, promote myself on social media to gain followers, and submit proposals and manuscripts to agents and acquisitions editors when requested.
People say the route to publication takes an average of ten years. They say it’s sometimes discouraging. And they say when it’s done right, the way swirls with rejections because any writer who’s worth anything gets lots of those. I got a handful of rejections, full of kind words. I filed them in my “Encouragement” folder for the difficult days. And I kept on.
But what threatened to drown The Dream was the nothingness. In spite of all my best efforts for years, nothing really happened.
Early in 2019, I was this close to putting The Dream out of its misery. I watched it dog paddle, and it exhausted me. I could let the waters close in over it, and who would notice? Maybe no one would see it thrashing for its life before it stilled for good.
But on the horizon, there it was: a life preserver for The Dream—and for me too, if I’m honest—because our dreams aren’t in this alone.
And the Dream Giver doesn’t make mistakes.
Tune in next week for the rest of the story.
Now tell me your dream, friend. I’d be honored to hear it.
*Names in this blog have been changed to protect my family and friends in the neighborhood, and in a nod of appreciation to the beloved Swedish author Maj Lindman, I’ve renamed my three blondies Flicka, Ricka, and Dicka.