The dream isn’t always that easy. Turning the desire to write into reality can be a harsh and unforgiving process, i.e. there will always be laundry and, sadly, dinner does not cook itself. Life in general is a time-devouring machine that does not, nor will it ever, provide great swaths of time, peace or tranquility for you to simply sit down and write that book you’ve dreamed of writing since childhood; because life happens one way or the other, and time, dictated by our endless obligations (even if done out of love), means our days are far too short.
Carpe diem, the popular aphorism goes, but carpe minutum might be a better adage: If that’s all you have, then scuttle off to that computer and put down the few words or ideas that rattle about your brain. Because it may be a few more days before those minutes present themselves again.
It’s hard to seize the dream; doubly hard if like many of us, you are attempting it for the first time. We don’t have that rhythm yet; we stumble, unsure of our methodology and research. We write, only to rewrite and start again.
When transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, a philosopher of nature, wanted to improve and work on his craft, and to try and live simply, he vanished to a small hut for two years where he reveled in the state of solitude. “Walden” is the product of that episode. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams,” he stated. All fine and well for him. He was ALONE in that hut.
So we hang on and we write when we can, our notes to the ready, resorting to long hand when the computer is not available, scribbling ideas on napkins, plunking key ideas or plot developments into emails or messages that we send to ourselves from our cell phones. We’ll all get there some day. If you’re devoted, you’ll spend every spare second making it happen.
As George Bernard Shaw said, the “people who get on in this world ... get up and look for the circumstances ... And if they can’t, make them.”
So just do it, for heaven’s sake. It’s how dreams come true.
