If you could achieve one thing in life, what would it be?
It's Sunday and I have my TV tuned to whatever race is available. Today it's NASCAR's Allstate 400 at Indy, the Brickyard, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Most American race car drivers grew up with the Indy 500 or the Daytona 500 as the race to win. Last year, NASCAR's Tony Stewart called Indy his Holy Grail. He had raced there 6 times with NASCAR and several times with Indy Racing League, and another few times after leaving the IRL he did "the Double", racing in the Indy 500 then immediately flying to Concord, NC to race in the NASCAR's Coca-Cola 600. A win at the Brickyard continued to elude him until last year, when he finally won the Allstate 400.
He now talks about what a relief it was to finally win his dream.
Onstage in the theatre, you have the Tony Award. Music has Grammy, and film, the Oscar. Writers can win in those competitions, or a Pulitzer, or any of the various genre awards. Given the number of writers in the world, the odds are poor for the individual writer to achieve that dream. Yet without the dream, will we get there?
Kick back for a moment and go back to the early days of your writing (or any other) dream. What was your Holy Grail? What was the one achievement that would tell you you had succeeded? Is there a trophy destined for your mantelpiece?
I don't recall ever dreaming of recognition for my writing. I just wanted the routine of being able to create stories. It was only a few years back, when my grandmother told me, "There's a story here," about the end stage of her life, that I realized I had in me the means to tell a tale of the sort that even gets considered for a Pulitzer.
Yet, still, my dream is simply to see Jon McCracken's name on the title page with my byline beneath, and to see Danny and Cassie appear on the big screen. Am I not dreaming big enough?
How about you? If you could achieve one thing in life, what would it be?
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Comments: 48
My one little modest dream is to have at least one of the cookbooks I have in me published by a publishing house.......;-)
As for writing: I've never cared much about writing. I don't like to do it at all but I can't help myself. I've enjoyed more success in that area than I'd ever considered and frankly, I would never write another word if I could give it up. It's "inner-driven" and has nothing to do with what I want.
I suppose since I probably have another 20 or 30 years ahead of me, I need to find another dream. I remind me of the song from "South Pacific" -- "If you don't have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?"
Great piece, Aileen. I hope you gets lots of response on this one.
Or maybe it would. Some writers get famous after they die.
Sunnye, you have to be a first! I know most of us say we write because we have to, but I don't recall where someone would rather not write. Intriguing!
Brandon, there was a time when I wanted fame, but only because I thought it was the only way to get enough money to own my own dog pound. I would much rather hear how people connected to my words and have them walk past me on the street.
J.V., you mke some great points!
Great little article.....set the braincells to colliding and forming those pesky little thoughts.
John, can you be patient that long?
Liz, I love it! Most of my fiction involves people who have some dream lke that which is real beyond possibilty.
Liz, have you tried the "Somewhere in Time" method of surrounding yourself with effects of the time and wishing yourself there? That was always my favorite method, although in my writing there is usually a vortex-type thing. Poor Jon McCracken (in my novel) blacks out and ends up in a different time. I don't recommend trying that!
Discipline and inspiration don't always walk hand-in-hand in my head.
Liz, when I was a child I felt that way about the Old West. I don't know what finally grounded me to now.
I would like to go to the 20's and see my mother as a child. I would like to see how my grandparents lived.
Have you ever read "From Time to Time" by Jack Finney? You would love it! I do, and I've read it four or five times.
.......i don`t need to be famous but i would like to be able to do the "work"......uninterrupted by material things......
I guess my 'Holy Grail' would be to earn my living as an artist as well (as a writer, actor, director). The dream is still far away, but I do earn money from both my writing and my acting, just nowhere near enough to give up my day job as yet.
A suggestion for Liz until the solve that pesky time travel thing: get involved in community theatre. I am currently in a play that takes place in the 1920s. Our costumes are all pretty authentic 20s fashions. The era comes to life when you perform it. I know it is not the same thing, but perhaps it would help assuage some of those yearnings in the meantime.
At the risk of becoming a target for the international organization for women... I'd say my Holy Grail these days is to have a family of my own. *cringe* There, I said it. Not that I don't want loads of other things as well.
Lisa, those books move a lot of people, that is a good goal!
My story about it is documented at spiritcalls.us
1. Generate enough traffic on my content-based websites that I could live off of that alone.
2. Finally get a book published.
I am working on achieving both ends.
I also run a few blogs, some of which are getting decent traffic.
to gain the knowledge and converstation of my holy guardian angel and to merge with her...
more common terms include, nirvana, crossing the abyss, becoming "enlightened"
for me, there is no higher purpose