To Dream the Unrealized Dream

As a kid, I loved to write. I wrote stories for other kids in my class to read. I wrote stories to read in front of the class. I got rave reviews from classmates and teachers. I was voted most likely to write a book first.

That was a long time ago, and I’ve yet to write a book. I’ve written enough over the years to fill many books. But they’ve all been short works—articles, reviews, status reports, design documents, role playing scenarios—not a cohesive whole that one would call a book.

As a youth I believed that I was destined to be a great writer, that I would write innumerable novels and be considered one of the best storytellers of all time for generations to come.

So far it hasn’t happened.

I outlined several books, including a fantasy trilogy. I found that writing outlines was easy to do. I got to be creative, coming up with what would happen next, quickly writing it down in a concise sentence or two, and moving on to what happens next. There was no intent to write brilliant prose or colorful characterizations, and no worry about grammar, sentence structure, or punctuation. I had no problem with writer’s block—I just wrote what happened next. It was pure plot.

Then I went back and started writing a novel based on the outline of the first book in the fantasy trilogy. And I found the experience to be completely boring. Transforming the outline to a novel was not as creative a process as writing the outline to begin with. While writing the outline, I had been so excited to know what would happen next, and I couldn’t write fast enough. In writing the novel from the outline, however, I already knew what was going to happen next, and the thrill of creation was gone. Indeed, writing the novel was work! I put it aside, hoping to do something with it later. (I did later base an entire RPG campaign on the outline, but that’s another story.)

I was still in my twenties at that time. I had another job, and was earning a decent living. I didn’t need to earn money from writing novels. I still had the dream of being a published author, but I had plenty of time. Not that I wanted to wait too long, but there was no big rush.

I read books and magazines on writing. I studied the craft. I would learn how to go about this business of writing the right way. Obviously writing an outline first was not going to work for me. I had to learn how to write the story without the intermediate step of writing an outline. So I read and studied, read and studied.

I was still in my mid-twenties when I came across a bit of advice from an author I admired. I won’t say his name, because I’ve decided in the intervening years that I don’t like his advice. The advice was to not attempt to write a novel until you are thirty. This particular author thought that anyone under the age of thirty didn’t have enough life experiences to draw upon to make for a good novel.

I was so discouraged by this role model’s advice, I quit trying. I would wait until I was thirty, and then go back to trying.

I reached thirty, but life was so full of problems at that point, I couldn’t even think about writing a novel. I still had the dream, but I had no time, no energy, and no inspiration. Real life was such a physical, mental, and emotional drain. I had life experiences, but none that I wanted to write about. Some of them just hurt too much to share with the world.

Years passed, and there were always reasons why not to write that first novel. I won’t list them, as they didn’t have substance anyway. If I had been motivated enough, I could have overcome any of those obstacles.

I still haven’t written that first novel. Will I ever? I have continued over the years to read and study, read and study. You’d think by now I would know every little writing trick in the book. So what’s stopping me?

It’s not too late for me. I still have a few more decades in me, I hope. But this is not really about me. It’s about the advice I want to give you, regardless of your age. Don’t wait. If you have a dream, if there is an endeavor you wish to undertake, there is no time like the present to follow that dream and undertake that endeavor. It is in the present that you shape your future. So what if you don’t excel at it the first time, the first two times, the first twenty times? The more you work at it, the better you will become at it. This may be advice best given to the young, but if you’re alive and well, then you have the opportunity to start. Start now.

As for me, I am currently enjoying editing and publishing the short stories of others. It just feels right now.