Reach for the Stars

 I am Not a Quitter

"If you can dream it, you can do it" 

We all have heard this quote. Most believe it was Walt Disney that said it, but truth be told if you look it up, it was first used in the 1980's in a General Electric recruitment campaign, penned by an author by the name of Cherylyn Silverstein. 

But let me just say whomever said it, it is the best quote ever. Ok, maybe not EVER, but it is a very good quote. We all have dreams and aspirations, but how many of us go for it? How many of us actually dream it then make it a reality? I would venture to say, very few. 

I believe I am an average person as far as the normal human scale. I would say that most everyone has a dream or desire to do something awesome, but I also believe that most of us let fear of failure stop us.

I won't get on that old story you have heard bits of for a while on here about my memoir I wrote about my brother, and how publishing was halted by my family without them even reading it, ending what I thought was my dream of ever publishing a book.

But I had a few friends, actually, I had a lot of friends who had read that manuscript and said that I needed to go ahead, publish it, it was "amazing", "awesome", "I wish I could have met your brother, he sounds like a really great guy".

I mean I could go on and on, but they also said, "Wow Dawn, you can't let this one thing stop you from writing." 

One of my very best friends, encourages me nearly every time we meet for coffee, telling me she loves to read my writings and that I need to share it with others. That I should change the names in my memoir, add fictional bits here and there and make it not a memoir, but a novel and publish it. But I just can't do that, because the point of that memoir was to share my very real, very not fictional, amazing, awesome, one of a kind, big hearted, big brother with the world. I feel it would diminish the reality of the story, and the point of why I wrote it to begin with. I know she meant well, but I just could't fictionalize the story, my heart wouldn't let me.

But I did take her advice on not giving up on my dream to write a book. Today, before I started typing these words to all of you, I typed the last sentence of a novel, my first novel. I cannot even explain how I feel looking at the stacks of paper, with red marker all over them, that clutter my desk and office space, while holding my final draft in my hand. 

All the days put into writing it, the editing, the changing the characters the story line, starting out as one genre to ending up a totally different one.  It was a lot of work, or should I say it took a lot of effort, not work. Because another wise person once said, "if you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life." I don't know who that person was, so I looked it up on the old Google, which tells me that it was an "anonymous" person back in a 1982 citation.  It also said that the exact quote is "Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life." 

Writing for me is not work, I love writing and expressing myself in written word. I am that old gal that still would love to mail a letter to a friend rather than text or call, although I seldom write a letter, people just don't anymore (but if you send me one, I will write you back, yep hand write you a note). 

As a child I loved having penpals and had quite a few. Sorry getting off track, but you get the point I love writing.

You will notice I titled this not a quitter, but let me be honest, I typed a few chapters and then went months without typing again. I guess that still qualifies me as "Not a Quitter", but I didn't write the way most author write. Most writers have a publisher, that require them to have discipline to set down daily and write a certain number of words, setting goals for you to reach at the end of each week. I think having someone breathing down my back might turn it into work, and that would be a shame. 

I let fear put a pause every so often, still stinging from the burn of daily writing and completing my memoir only to be stopped, right when it was ready to be published. That created an inner voice that would tell me, why are you putting all this effort in when it will never be published, no one will ever read it. And so, I would take weeks, months before I even looked at my novel again.

If you follow this blog at all you will see that I have a relationship with Jesus, but sometimes it is a strained one as I have shared openly my struggles. But even in the valleys, I continue to talk to him about things, and I believe he responds....... sometimes as I am still waiting patiently for his answers to a few things in my life.

Well, I have had a long standing prayer of periodically asking him what he wanted me to do with this dream of writing. I waited for an answer and never heard anything. I had stopped even attempting to complete the manuscript , it sat for months untouched. Then out of the blue, one day I pulled it up on the old desk top and started reading it, next thing I knew I was typing and adding to it, and I had been pulled so deep into the story that it was as if it was someone else's writing and I was reading it and couldn't wait to read the next chapter. (Who knew that as an Author you could get so drawn into the story you, yourself are writing, that you can't wait to see what will happen next!) I felt like God was giving me the story line as I typed, it was unexplainable, like the story just flowed out of my fingers as they clicked across the keyboard.

Although the novel is not necessarily a Christian book, it is a book for those in their teen years and up, it is a bit of a love story, but not exactly the love story you think of when you hear "teen" and "Love story" in the same sentence, (especially now a days) It is a clean novel, no spice, but a lot of sugar......some like it hot....I prefer it sweet. (insert wink) 

I don't have a publisher, I do not have the money to even attempt that route. Most people have no idea the expense of going through a publishing company, especially as a first time author. But there is this really awesome place called Amazon, that offers writers the opportunities to publish there own writing, and although I am unsure exactly how to transfer my manuscript to the Kindle Creator and publish it, I am researching it. I have purchased the manuals to do it, and I am not letting fear stop me.

So, today, I finished my first novel, I have hired my lovely daughter who just so happens to have a degree in Graphic Design to create my book cover, and I will hopefully be a published author of a novel soon. 

I am not a quitter, I have dreamed this dream since my very first blue ribbon from a program called Young Authors I competed in when I attended elementary school. I was probably around eight years old when I received that blue ribbon, it only was a mere fifty years ago. It is never too late to go after your dreams. 

I mean like she said, "if you can dream it, you can do it." - Cherylyn Silverstein.

Be Blessed,

The Happy Farm Wife 

PS. The title of my novel, just incase you want to watch for it, "Flowers Can Bloom Through Ashes."