Writing Dreams

Literary agent Rachelle Gardner posted today on her blog a question from reader about writing dreams. Here's the thread. I made posted a comment, which I think will make for a good blog post here. The question Rachelle asked was: Have you had to adjust your dream (i.e. dream of being a writer) along the way?

Yes, I have constantly adjusted my dreams for writing. I think they have followed a bell curve. At first I simply wanted to get the story that was in me into print. That required that I finish the novel, which I did in early 2003. I then began to study the publishing industry and learned my novel broke a number of rules for what they would publish. Rather than diminish my dream, after a bit of sulking it seemed to expand it. They followed the bell curve upward as I expanded my writing to try to keep up with my dreams. I wrote more things, in more genres, in more types of writing, than I ever had in mind at first, all following the dream. The dream fed itself. It seemed that the upward leg of the bell curve was very steep.

Those dreams to be published peaked, I think, around the end of 2010, when I rounded a bend on the publishing track and found more hurdles; hurdles which I didn’t see myself as having the energy to cross. The downward leg of the bell curve was very steep at that time.

But rather than end at the X axis, which would have been giving up, the curve stopped at an intermediary place: e-self-publishing. From there I find my dreams on an upward leg of a new bell curve, beginning from that higher plateau rather than from zero. The upward leg of the dream curve is not as steep as last time, and the vertical rise is happening more slowly.

Once dreams are broken, it’s hard to dream as big again.