I Think My Dreams are Changing

I think my writing dreams are changing. For the last several years, I’ve been so focused on my goal of becoming an author. And it’s not that I don’t want to be an author, but in the last few months, that dream has been slowly morphing into something else.

Recently, I joined a band and started making music. I have always loved to sing and it has always brought me great joy. Singing a song I love makes my soul light up in a way that speaks to the power of music. As a young girl, I dreamt of being a singer. That was back when every girl in class wanted to be a vet and the notion of being a famous artist when I could barely draw wasn’t out of the question. It was the stage of life where anything is possible. Before reality sets in and casts some (read: most) of those dreams aside.

Here’s the thing. I haven’t worked on either of my in-progress novels at all in the last couple of months. I’ve had a lot going on, from socializing with friends and spending time with my boyfriend to getting back into running and working an overwhelming job. With writing, I was feeling stuck and unmotivated. And it’s partly because I found another creative outlet and now I’m weighing where to put the majority of my creative energy. Someone wise once told me to put it wherever feels best in the moment.

On a phone call with my dad, he said, “One thing we have a shortage of is time.” And that hit home for me. With so little time, and so many competing desires, how do we balance them?

I’ve worn the author hat for a long time. It’s been fun to try on the singer hat, a hat I once loved but stuffed under the bed to collect dust long ago. I’m doing vocal warm ups in my living room. I’m drinking tea to soothe my throat after a long recording session (also sometimes in my living room). I’m meeting my bandmate at the studio (which is really freaking cool by the way) and for once in my life I don’t feel like an imposter. I don’t walk into the space and make myself smaller because I’m shy and these people are impossibly talented. And they are, it just doesn’t make me think less of my own talent anymore.

So where does that leave my novels? Where does that leave the dream of being published? I’m not ready to give up on it, and I’ve been sitting with some uncomfortable questions about it. Am I shifting my focus to singing because its the shiny new thing that doesn’t hold as much weight as my novels do? Am I giving up because every article I read about the publishing industry makes it, and being an author in it, sound horrible?

Let me rephrase. I’m not giving up. I believe in my novels and I would like to see them published and on a bookshelf one day. How I get there is what may be morphing right now. The articles I’ve been reading have removed the glitz and glamour and exposed the harsh realities of the publishing world. The percentages of getting an agent are very low (I’m not even going to find the stat for you, it’s depressing), and that’s just the beginning of the long road to being published. After that, your agent has to sell the book to a publisher and an editor has to edit it. There are a thousand ways things could go wrong in those two steps alone. And once your book is out, you have to market your ass off. I work in marketing for my day job but the thought of marketing myself and my book? *Shudders in horror*.

I don’t say all these things to complain or justify anything. I’m simply stating facts that have been revealed from various sources that have all been there and done that. There are many perils to being an author. And yet, my dreams of being an author are still there in some capacity. I want to get a book published because I wrote a book. But do I want to be a career author? Will it fill my personal joy meter the way singing does? I’m not sure.

The publishing industry is cutthroat in a way I’ve never seen before. Not in the way becoming a famous pop star or Olympic athlete is, but in a quiet, brutal way. Authors rise, get seven figure deals, and disappear never to be heard from again. Or authors get an agent who can’t sell their manuscript and it’s back to the drawing board. Or authors get an agent and a publisher and a modest book deal but are dropped by the publisher (and in some cases the agent) when the sales numbers don’t reach expectations. I’ve also read a lot about why sales numbers often don’t meet goals and how bad sales figures follow an author around like a criminal record.

When I was a child, the same one who believed she could be a renowned artist or a famous singer or simply a vet, I filled countless notebooks with half-baked, handwritten stories. When my parents sold the home I grew up in, I curled up on the soft tan carpet, and tried to read the stories from my younger self. I say tried because the handwriting was messy and they were years old at this point. It makes me think back to how much fun I had filling those notebooks. I’m an only child so I had to find creative ways to entertain myself. My parents could be watching the news or doing some other grown up thing like taxes, and I’d be sitting there, absorbed in the world I was creating with the tip of my pencil. I didn’t stress about developing the characters or defining their emotional arcs or making sure the conflict had enough tension and was followed by a satisfying resolution. I wrote for my eyes only. While I didn’t keep all the notebooks (there were too many to bring back to my little apartment) I can still remember bits and fragments of those stories.

I’ll never give up on writing. I will keep making music because it makes me happy. I will get a book published when I’m ready to endure the hardship I know comes with the territory.

And when I do, I’ll channel my inner child because she was unspoiled by reality, and that alone is a kind of magic.

📚 What I’m reading: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. There has been a lot of hype around this book, and at almost 100 pages in, I can safely say it’s justified. TJR has a special ability to make me interested in topics I’ve never thought of reading about before. In this book, a group of female astronauts in the ‘80s navigate the joy, friendship, romance, hardship, and misogyny that comes with being some of the first women to join NASA. I can already tell this book is going to be as emotionally devastating as it is powerful. Stay tuned for a review!

🎥 What I’m watching: Dancing with the Stars! The competition is fierce this season. My top two are Whitney Leavitt and Robert Irwin. If they’re this good only four weeks in, I can’t wait to see how they improve by the end of the show.

✨ Your turn: What other topics would you be interested in reading about on The Lively Word? Leave a comment below and let me know!