I Want To Fly

Maybe it's not good to write a blog when I'm emotional, but here I am. It's a good kind of emotional, I think. I was just reading a blog an author had written some time ago after she got her first book deal. She posted all the different stages of insane emotions she went through those first few days after realizing that she was, in fact, an author.

And then she posted a pic of her book sitting on a shelf in a major bookstore.

And I'm just now drying the tears that exploded from my eyes at the sight of that. I want that to be my book on that shelf. I want to be that person. I want to be an author. I've wanted it for longer than I can remember.

Sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I get so caught up in whatever I'm dealing with at the moment that I lose the dream--the vision. As I've realized fairly recently, this is NOT my ultimate goal, but I have to admit, I want to be a published author pretty badly.

Lately...since like December...I've been in this major funk. I've written some. I've edited some. But it's not been very much. I'm not even sure what's going on. I think I've gotten into some kind of mindset that I'm just not good enough to compete with the current market. I'm not talented enough. My writing isn't good enough. I'm not competitive enough of a person.

Really, what I seem to be saying is, "I don't want it enough."

And it's really quite funny, because just today I finished writing a very short fairy tale about a peasant who became a king just because he was too simple-minded to realize that his goal was impossible. Since he didn't know it was impossible, he tried anyway, and he succeeded, shaming noble knights and wise princes.

But I'm not like that peasant. I get too distracted by the things I think I can't do to focus on the things that I need to just do anyway.

Clearly there needs to be a change. If I'm ever going to see my book on a shelf, if I'm ever going to see my name on a book's spine, if I'm ever going to be able to call myself an author--I've gotta start trying.

Douglas Adams is one of my favorite authors. He wrote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is a completely nonsensical and hilarious series of books. One of my favorite sections of these books is when he talks about how to fly.

Now, he's being completely ridiculous, but I have gleaned a lot of truth from what he wrote:

"There is an art...or rather a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.... All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt. That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. Most people fail to miss the ground, and if they are really trying properly, the likelihood is that they will fail to miss it fairly hard."

What do published authors have that I don't have? A lot of scars. Unless they're Stephenie Meyer, who just lucked out on her first try and created a monster (literally and figuratively...and literary-ly), published authors probably have to fail to miss the ground a lot before they learn to fly.

So here I am again, trying to muster up the courage it's going to take me to learn to fly. I know I'm more than likely to fail to miss the ground. I just hope that I'm trying hard enough to fail to miss it pretty hard. Because I have a feeling that when I finally do fail to miss the ground, all the failed attempts are just going to make that success sweeter.

And here's the part of the blog where I remind myself of something that is impossible for me to grasp: Nothing is impossible with God. If I can ever wrap my brain around that, I guess anything will be possible.