Congratulations on an awesome book! I hope you succeed beyond your wildest dreams and have a life of writing, beer, and Nicola.
Cara
I must admit that succeeding beyond my wildest dreams is a stretch goal, because I dream big. I’m thinking, well, okay, what’s my wildest dream of success, and I can’t even post it here, it’s just too over the top.
I find that I am not embarrassed to have these dreams, which are a very powerful force in my personality and my life. But I am sometimes embarrassed to share them with other people. The endless question: what to reveal, what to keep private. It’s hard to have precious things misunderstood or dismissed. Yet I also believe that dreams are harder to achieve if they are too closely guarded, never made external in any way. It seems to me they need to be expressed somehow, even if it’s just out loud to myself in a field miles from nowhere in the middle of the night. It’s mighty powerful to say, “I want this.” It sets up echoes that come back at the damndest times.
So thank you for your kind wishes. I hope so too. I want it.
I’m still thinking about my dreams and whether I guard them or not… If I guard them, then I do such a great job that they remain hidden even from myself. If I don’t guard them, then my dreams are sort of simple and divided into two categories: the Feel Good dreams and the Goal Type dreams.
Feel Good dreams are the ones I tell myself and others because they are fun to think about and share. Like wishing I’ll one day own a house in Coyoacán and have enough money so that my friend Miguel and I can spend many winters there: drinking coffee, eating great Mexican food, walking around the cobbled-stone streets holding hands, breathing and chatting without any rush under the half-shade of the trees—just warm enough to feel sated. It is highly unlikely that either of us will ever take the steps necessary to own such house and have enough leisurely time to spend it this way, but we still both love talking about it. It feels good.
Other Feel Good Dreams include: winning the lottery (I’m so original), sharing the money with my family and best friends, accidentally cooking up the cure—using only a skillet on a stove—for any major disease or disorder currently affecting a large population, developing mind-reading superpowers as a result of being stricken by lightning, developing shape-shifting superpowers as a result of holding my breath too long, living to see my friends win Oscars for best animated short film, the Nebula and the Hugo and the Locus and the the James Tiptree, Jr. and so on. I wouldn’t mind winning one of those myself, either. Also, under the category of Feel Good Dreams, I’d love to write the Next Harry Potter or the Next Twilight of YA Lit. Now that we’re writing, let’s go all the way and write a story that Guillermo del Toro would dig enough to turn into a film. What else? Living a long enough life to get to experience fully immersive VR and using it to have a massively multiplayer online orgy. Oh, so many Feel Good Dreams. But I won’t be heartbroken if none of this actually happens.
Now I’ll get me a refill of coffee for the all-nighter I have to pull off and think about my Goal Type Dreams. Be right back.
Goal Type Dreams are those I can sort of make happen through hard work and patience and a bit of luck. I’d be half-heartbroken if they didn’t come true.
Goal Type Dreams include:
– Starting and keeping a publishing house. It would be called something like Editorial Sin Prisa, which means more or less “Publishing Without Any Hurry.” Its efforts would focus exclusively on literature in translation.
– To continue translating works by my favorite authors in the Universe.
– Getting my favorite English-bound authors published in Spanish.
– Writing and selling a short story collection.
– Writing and selling a poetry collection.
– Writing and selling a YA novel.
– Finding a TA or a teaching position when I’m done with grad school.
– Finding a benefactor who will sponsor my work and lifestyle. I already have one offer, but it includes sex on a daily basis and ironing corporate clothes. I don’t mind the sex. I hate ironing. I’d prefer scholarships and grants that don’t require me to interact with domestic appliances.
– Being able to spend summers in Vancouver and winters in Guadalajara.
… I have more, but I need to work some more on the research paper due tonight by midnight. I’ll come back, but probably to one of the other posts on today’s VP.
I’m curious about your dreams. I think I know a couple or maybe three. But you must have at least as many as I have, and I’ve got a truckload.
May at least half of our dreams come true. Cheers!
Revise: “Iâd be half-heartbroken if they didnât come true.”
Should really read: “I’d be absolutely heartbroken if they didn’t come true.”
Maybe not about the benefactor or the teaching ones… but the rest of them, yeah. Totally heartbroken.