It’s The Fire Inside Your Heart That’s Going to Lead You to The Light

Today I read a blog post that literally made me cry. I’m a fixer. I want to fix things. My husband is sometimes exasperated by this fact and tells me to stop trying to find the solution in unsolvable issues. I can’t help it – I want to fix your problems. If you’re reading the blog and thinking I don’t want to fix your problem – you’d be wrong. I want everyone who’s ever read this blog to simply not have problems. I’m like a beauty pageant contestant that way: I want world peace for all. Unlike the beauty contestant I enjoy a fair amount of chaos and upheaval because that makes for the best solutions – why can’t everything be like the Chilean mine rescue? I don’t want to be the hero and I’m not searching for recognition – but damn it; bring on the conflict and resolution already.

How you ever gonna know if you never chase the dreams…

And that’s why today found me reading a blog post and crying. I can’t fix it. I totally get it, but responding to the post seems pointless and self-serving. Does it help to know that writing makes me feel that way too? I find myself constantly on the verge of greatness and then shying away from the edge to wallow in a comfortable, meaningless, part-time job-hobby. I’m not sure I would actually know how to react if I did get a book deal. I too build my castles and dreams in the sky and am afraid to build them here on earth; they might crumble and fall. Do I tell you that I know I’m “home” in every sense of the word - by your blog post standards - and yet still sometimes find myself pining for a time and a place that can’t ever exist for me again…a flat on the corner of Earl’s Court and Cromwell Rd and a stroll through the constantly damp streets and mews of Kensington? Do you want to know that my favorite writing place in the world is on a cold stone wall surrounding a sunken garden on the grounds of what is now known as the Enchanted Palace (seriously – that’s what their calling it now)? It doesn’t help you, find you a job or patch that hole in your soul.

How you ever gonna know what it's like when dreams become reality…

I’m left with one memory of two fourteen-year-old children walking home from school after just learning they made their high school marching band; gleefully chanting about going to Spain and Africa. I had help remembering – I recently read it in that blasted journal. But the euphoria of realized dreams is a sweet memory that leaves the tang of wanting more fulfilled dreams. It also makes me want to go to Spain and Africa since I’ve yet to see either. I’m not sure if that euphoric feeling is forever concealed in the wisps of childhood recollection – or if it’s possible to feel that happy and excited about any recognition of brilliance? I’m also not sure where this is going exactly. I said I didn’t post a comment because I knew it wouldn’t help – yet here I sit writing my own blog post with the small hope that it somehow will and knowing it can’t. Maybe what I need to say is simply this: I cried today and looked inside myself today and I wrote today; and I did all of those things because I read one blog post. Apparently words are power.

How you ever gonna know your potential if you never take a chance?

And on that note, it’s the last day of November and my NaNo novel is done – well not done, but at 50,000 words. 51,012 to be exact! As I don’t write sequentially – especially in November: where I tend to jump to the next big scene when I’m stuck so as to not slow down the pace – I will now begin the grueling editing, rearranging and expunging process. Alas, I love every minute of it. The computer and I are on speaking terms once more. For those of you participating, I hope you are able to cross the finish line by midnight and win a feeling of accomplishment, because that’s what you’ll win. Maybe this one will get published. Oh, I’m lying. And I promised to be completely honest in this particular blog post. It’s a load of twaddle – this year’s NaNo. It was excruciating and I’m fairly certain two-thirds of it will be deleted tomorrow and in the upcoming week. I have no hopes it will ever be published. On the optimistic side: I’m writing, the computer and I ARE friends again, and I will honestly try harder for publication. When you write, you tell everyone you know so they can constantly ask you about it; thus keeping you on track and embarrassing the crap out of you if you give up or stop looking for an agent/editor. Posting the information on your blog is ten times worse somehow. Knowing people will randomly check your blog for updates and progress reports. Well, I’d hate to disappoint you all but mostly I’m sick of disappointing myself and I’m really fed up with the fear. Fear should be no one’s constant companion, especially not mine. So I will try harder for me. I will try to recapture the joyful exhilaration of accomplishment and dream fulfillment I once had at the age of fourteen while chanting about Spain and Africa.

Listen not to the critics who put their own dreams on the shelf. If you want to get the truth to admit it, you gotta find out for yourself.

Oh, and in case you do not know – all bold words, and also the title of this post, come from a Garth Brooks song – “How You Ever Gonna Know”. Check it out – says the non-country music girl constantly toting Mary Chapin Carpenter, Alison Krauss and now Garth Brooks. Something else I need to admit to myself apparently.