Category: dreams

A Dream

August 15th, 2013

I had a dream that I had a magic wand. It was pink, with glitter. (I do not like the color pink, but go with me on this.) I could wave the wand and it would give me completed manuscripts. A wave, and The Walls Around Us was finished and ready for my editor. Another wave, and a short story appeared. Another wave, and the adult novel I want to write turned into a massive stack of pages on my desk. One last wave, and the secret project I’m working on was done and no longer such a secret. Waving my magic manuscript wand was SO easy. It was the best kind of magic I could hope for. I can’t tell you how terribly sad I was when I woke up and realized I didn’t have the wand and none of those manuscripts were actually written…

Until I remembered something.

I remembered that the reason I write isn’t for that final stack of pages all neat and collated on my desk. It’s for the *writing* part of writing. The feeling I get when I invent those pages, when I carve a good paragraph, when I create a character who surprises me. The process of writing, on good days, can be such a terrific high. A thrill and a deep sense of satisfaction that I’ve never felt for anything else in this life, ever. If I did have that pink, glittery magic wand from my dream, I’d never have a chance to experience this feeling again. And wouldn’t that be sadder?
On Dreams and Hearts: In Which Someone Says Something So Much Better Than I Ever Could

May 24th, 2012

I’d planned to blog today, and that blog was meant to be about my first writing love—literary fiction for adults, which I aspired to write since college—and how dreams shift and balloon and curl back in on themselves, and how dreams expand and take on new faces, and how your dreams change as you grow and change.

But then I began thinking about the book I did write, the book that led me away from my original dream into a new dream. This was Imaginary Girls. Last night, in the aftermath of a mini identity crisis, E and I were talking, in the way we do, about my future as an author. He’s just as invested as I am in this, and he knows all of what I want to do, can do, could do, might do, and wish to do. We talked about how Imaginary Girls turned out—the book I wrote. It doesn’t matter who the audience was meant to be, before or after or during. Would I have written a single word differently? And the answer is no: That book is exactly how I want it to be, how I meant it to be. I was true to my characters. I was true to my intention. True to my love for my sister. True to myself.

Truth.

Imaginary Girls is the book of my heart.

Which brings me to today, in which I came upon Beth Revis’s beautiful post: “The Book of My Heart.” She says so much and more:

If you’re a writer who is unpublished, then I hope and pray you will eventually write the book of your heart. It’s a wonderful thing, and the closest I’ve come to touching magic. But I also want you to know something very, very important: the book of your heart is not the apex of your writing. It is not necessarily the best thing you’ve written, and it’s not necessarily your only shot at getting published.

I encourage you to read her post, if you’ve written the book of your heart years ago, or if you’re writing the book of your heart today. Even if you haven’t found the book of your heart yet and you wonder where it might be.

And if you’ve written the book of your heart already and have seen in published, I encourage you to read the comment on that post from Jo Knowles.

I have no more words today.

Category: dreams

A Dream

On Dreams and Hearts: In Which Someone Says Something So Much Better Than I Ever Could