Just about every response to my Champagne wishes and caviar dreams post yesterday at Killer Chicks made me smile. I’m glad I’m not the only one who dreams big. Because really, what’s wrong with wanting it all? What’s wrong with imagining the impossible? What’s wrong with putting just a little bit of that creative energy – the same energy that fuels our work – into allowing ourselves to imagine What If?
It was two years and three months ago (August 2008) when I was staring at the first 10,000 words of my story. I was overwhelmed. I had a million ideas and wasn’t sure I could pull it off… but what if I could? What if I actually finished this story? Five months later, I had a completed first draft.
Then I dreamed of having a polished manuscript. How great would it be to have a book that was finished All The Way? What if I could have a version of this novel with no typos, no messy plot lines, and decent character development? Even if it never got published, what a tremendous accomplishment it would be to have written, revised and polished a novel. Six revisions and ten months later, I had a clean manuscript.
And then I thought, I don’t think this book completely sucks. In fact, what if it’s actually pretty good? Maybe if I query it, I’ll get an agent. Three months later, I got The Call.
And even though I knew what the odds were of this novel selling, I thought, what if it does sell? What if, despite the crappy economy, despite my agent’s warnings that fiction is a tough market, and despite being an unknown, a publisher actually wants to buy it? So I allowed myself to imagine it. I imagined getting a call from my agent telling me I was getting published. I imagined myself as a debut novelist.
And guess what… that happened, too.
I think we should always dream big. We might never get the mansion and the personal cabana boy and Angelina Jolie on speed dial, but it’s cool to dream about it. Because even if that dream never materializes, what does happen is usually more than good enough.