86. Creating reality

Friday, July 01, 2005

Mood: pondering

Music: Anna Nalick - Satellite

"If you create your own reality, nothing is unattainable."

Yesterday, I saw this quote on a scan for the pictures being released of Jessica Alba in July's Seventeen magazine. I'm a fan of Jessica Alba, and I have been since back in the day when Dark Angel was on the air years ago. I was so sad when that show was canned after the second season because there was so much of the story to tell when it came to that show. They left all of the fans hanging. Back to the quote though, it got me thinking, and I thought about it throughout the day. I wrote it down on one of my notepads on my desk, and I found myself glancing at it every so often.

As a writer, it is our job to create another reality with our stories. We create the scene, the characters, the plot. All of that is our job. The reader then picks up a book, and if we did our job right, they are transported from the world they live in to some other world of our creation. They find themselves lost in it. They aren't turning pages, but they are watching the scene play out in their mind's eye. Sometimes even the writer gets lost within their own story. Their thoughts speed by at maddening rates. Snippets of dialogues, scenes, descriptions all go through their mind. When the writer comes up for air, sometimes they don't realize how deep into the world they created they went.

If you went that deep, the person reading might also go that deep. That's what we want! We all know those aha moments we have when we're writing. That moment where we even shut up that little inner critic, and everything is perfect. The trick is getting to see that publisher, that editor, that agent ... at the right moment so they see what you see. That's the hard part of this whole thing isn't it?

Well, here we go one step further with that quote above. Writing isn't easy. If it were easy, we would have even more books on the shelves than we do now, and we have a lot of books on the shelves as it is. There are plenty of talented writers that never make it. They don't sell a story or a book because finding that right moment never happens. Some might say it is because that writer sucked or to put it nicely they weren't talented enough. The fact of the matter is there are way too many talented writers out there and we're all fighting for the same publishing spots.

In order to make it you have to be tough, you have to be positive you have the skills to make it as a writer. Your books will sell, and you can do it. Even if you have to create your own reality in your mind to keep those same spirits up. In your mind, you can be the greatest writer on the face of the planet. Your books will be published, and they will appear on the top NY Times Bestseller list. It will happen. You know it in your heart. Even if the reality is you have a long way to go before you get that far, but in your reality that isn't years down the road but days or months in the making. In your mind, there is nothing you can't do. If that is what it takes for you to move forward, do things a little bit quicker, keep a positive outlook even when you get those rejections then so be it.