One misconception of pursuing our dream is having to stop living our lives and doing something totally different. Excuses for not completing the book and becoming an author are easily accessible. We say we don’t have the money. We say we are too busy raising our children. We say we don’t have enough time because after all of the hours we work on our jobs, by the time we get home and get everything else together, there is not energy left for writing.
Now these can be real scenarios but pursing our dream comes to play right in the middle of all of this. Pursing our dream is going to cause us to step out of our comfort zones and move into a creative process. When we make a decision to live our dream, our current lives do not stop. Rather the creative process makes a path through our lives. All we have to do is allow our creativity access.
We keep commitments to everything and everyone else and break our personal commitments first. Creativity will never force its way. It will come out and play whenever the door is opened. But beware! It is hard to corral creativity once we give it the freedom it desires.
One of the issues of living our dream is the failure to continue to follow through. We start the manuscript but we never finish. We finish the manuscript but we never get it edited. We fail to do our research. We get it edited but we never send it to be published. Once again, we fail to research. We get it published but we never tell anyone about it. Life is happening all around us. We are fully participating everywhere else helping in the lives of others but fail to see to it that our fires are consistently burning on our own dreams.
Then there are those times you can self-sabotage your own process. One of the main ways this is done by sharing your dream with the wrong people, those known as dream killers. Sometimes you can want the applause or approval of people who are incapable or unwilling to give it. This can leave room for your confidence to be shattered. Waiting on the proverbial pat on the head which you never feel can block your personal creativity. If not handled properly, it can cause you to abort or delay your dream of writing your book.
So what is the answer? Do you tell others about writing your book? Of course you do! But you share it with others who (1) are writing books of their own (2) are spending their energy working on their personal projects or (3) people who you know genuinely love and support you. These are the people who would cheer you on if you successfully dug a hole in your backyard.
Ultimately, living your dream of becoming an author is your responsibility alone. It takes focus, determination, commitment and wise decision-making. Having these qualities in place will guide your creative life in producing the book of your dreams.