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| photo by katerina plotnikova via google images |
I live in a world where stories float like formless spirits waiting for me to pluck them from the sky. Unlike many, I’m at peace with undefined edges and ethereal urgings. I don’t need to nail them down or to make them fit. I don’t even need them to clarify themselves. At least not at first. At first the thrill of merely sensing them is enough, of tasting something I barely recognize, of breathing in the scent of an unfamiliar emotion. For me it’s ecstasy born of boundless possibility.
There’ve been so many of those stories tempting me over the years, but one in particular grew legs only to walk all over my heart until I agreed to listen. Intently. It begged me to define its ethereal edges, to give it weight, to transform a once dream into raw reality.
It took me years. Of writing. Of polishing. Of throwing out and birthing. Of fighting through doubt as if it were a pile of mucky quicksand threatening to devour me alive. Somehow though, I didn’t give up. Nay, I couldn’t give up. It meant too much to me. Even when no one else listened. Even when no one else cared. And worst of all, even when the path of my dream was blasted and criticized.
Then one day, like a sunrise after a heavy rain, I found her. I found the kindred spirit who would champion my dream. She tapped me on the shoulder and asked to hold my umbrella. She picked up a sword and told all the nay say-ers they were wrong. And she smiled and laughed and clutched her heart when I told her about all the formless spirits who begged to be plucked from the sky.
“Write about it,” she said.
So I stopped planting flowers to pick up a pen.
* * *
You may think I speak in code. But really it’s just those sensory treats, those formless spirits masquerading themselves into words so that you can feel them, too. I try to get them down on paper as kindly as I can, without squelching their ethereal gifts, without hardening their edges more than I need to. But I have to a bit, just enough so that you can see them, too. Is it working? I hope so.
* * *
Just last week I signed with an agent. Her name is Annie and she is lovely. Anyone who knows me, knows I dream. A lot. And truthfully, Annie is beyond what I ever dreamt I could find in an agent. She understands my words and my heart. She values connection and growth. And most of all, she’s an advocate of the formless spirits, inviting me to pluck still more from the vast ocean sky, reminding me, and now maybe you, that dreams really can come true.
