Leap of Faith...Doing the Impossible

Hello, Jolene Navarro here. I have a confession to make. We all dream of something. It can be as big as standing on the podium and bending your head so they can place a gold medal around your neck or as simple as owning a home and having your own family. 

I’ve had many dreams, and some I just out grew, but there was one that was always with me, one I never thought would come true: writing stories that would be published and sit on book store shelves.

 

Dreams of doing huge book signings and getting sack full of letters from people I didn’t know. I imagined getting awards and all sorts of accolades. I had a strong imagination. 

Many of the notes home from my teachers were how I was not meeting my potential; I spent too much time daydreaming. One teacher was worried about me because I seemed to be marching to a different drum beat than the other kids in my class. Plus, I could not spell to save my life, and it was not from the lack of trying or studying. By the sixth grade I learned to cheat on my spelling test so I would not be grounded. I would fail tests even though I had the right answers because ‘if it was spelled wrong it did not count.’ I worked hard, but was accused of being lazy.

This is how I felt most of the time in school. This is from the Ron Clark story. Great inspirational story about teaching.

I hesitated going to college, all I could see was more humiliation, so I went to art school in Houston. As I moved through life, one thing stayed with me. It was the stories in my head. I had developed characters that were always talking, but I never told anyone about them. I went to sleep telling myself stories.

Fast forward a bit. As a young wife and mother I did end up going back to school. I was diagnosed with dysgraphia. It is the other side of dyslexia. I usually just say I’m dyslexic, because most people are familiar  that word. Kind of like telling people I’m from San Antonio because most people outside of Texas have not heard of Boerne.

Dysgraphia is a decoding issue also but works on the output. Spelling, pronunciation, handwriting, and flow of language are some of the struggles. I went on to graduate with honors. My Masters is in Education with a specialization in reading and spec. ed.  About the same time this happened, I was approaching forty, my oldest of four children was about to graduate from high school and I had lost both parents suddenly and unexpectedly. I had a strong sense of time running out.

The one dream that still burned within me was being a published writer. As I heard the clock ticking, I knew I would have to take a risk, to put myself out there to be humiliated if I wanted to find out if I could succeed.

Last weekend we saw “Eddie the Eagle”.  

From left, director Dexter Fletcher, Hugh Jackman, Eddie Edwards and Taron Egerton on the set of EDDIE THE EAGLE. Photo Credit: Larry Horricks-TM & © 2016 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. LARRY HORRICKS

The story of a boy that had to have surgeries on his legs. He had one dream to become an Olympic athlete. The only problem? He wasn’t athletic, but he didn’t let failure stop him. It is a great story about persistence. He ended up training for the ski jump because England didn’t have a ski jumper. He started off on the small one and worked his way up. He crashed, people laughed at him and he was told he didn’t belong, but in the end he saw his dream come true.

Being a writer is pretty much the same way. There will be people telling you that you’re not good enough or you need to be realistic and do something else. You can get help, go to workshops, even get a mentor or surround yourself with other writers, but eventually you have to sit on that bar high above the world all alone and jump.  

More about the movie and Calgary-

Sometimes you will crash, sometimes you might stick the landing, but people still tell you it’s not enough. No matter your obstacles, do you have the persistence to get up and jump from that bar again? Do you have people that will celebrate you no matter the outcome, small or big?It has not always been easy, but I've seen three of my stories on the shelf and I have two more coming. I'm living my dream.

Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman in Eddie the Eagle

Do you have a dream that you have been hesitant to pursue?  On a side note, my husband (my real hero) accused me of writing this blog so I could post pictures of Hugh Jackman. I say no comment. But you can comment! Leap people, find the thing you love and fly!

Finding the space for your dreams

The view from my new house!

Hi everyone! I'm Danica Favorite, and today I want to talk about your dreams. I'm a big believer in following your dreams, and I don't think we talk about our dreams nearly often enough.

Right now, I am smack dab in the middle of chasing down a dream my husband and I have had since we started dating. We used to go for drives in the mountains, talking about how someday, we wanted to live there. Fast forward a few years with kids, jobs, and the fact that houses in the mountains are super expensive. We had a nice home in the suburbs and a pretty comfortable life. But that dream of living in the mountains had never left us. Along the way, we found another dream- one of having a place where we could have horses. The more time passed, the more the idea of our dream kept coming up. And, after the wildest journey I could have imagined since early this year, it happened.

We live in the mountains.

The property we bought is amazing. We have rock formations, meadows, trees, ponds, and a stream. The house... not so much. We lost almost half of our living space, and it's been an adjustment. Fortunately, we're working on an addition, and hopefully in a few months, we'll have a much bigger, gorgeous home. Well, the gorgeous part may take a while, but it's coming.

A year ago, if you'd told me this is what we'd be doing, where we'd been living, I'd have told you that you were crazy. But a year ago, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of going to England. Which was the result of fulfilling my lifelong dream of becoming a published author. And the more I make the leap to following my dreams and finding ways of making them happen, the more I want to make more of my dreams come true.

















One of the fun pieces of living in the mountains is our mail delivery. The mailman delivers our mail at the end of our very long driveway, and it's been raining a lot. So last week, the advance copies for my July book came, and he left the big box of books in a trash bag. I love that he took the time to protect my books!

What's your dream?  Are there steps you can take to make your dreams come true? Even if it's just a tiny step, I encourage you to take it.

I'd love to give away a copy of my July book- read it way before you can buy it! All you have to do is leave a comment telling me about your dream. If you tell me a step you can take towards it, you'll earn an extra entry into the drawing. AND, if you DO one thing to bring you closer to your dream and post about it, I'll give you a third entry!

You have a whole week to post. I'll come back next Wednesday and draw a winner from all of the entries!

USA Today Bestseller List, December 5, 2013

Patricia Davids here.

 

I received a congratulatory email from my editor on Thursday. My e-book collection, Christmas Brides of Amish Country, debuted at # 133 on the USA Today Bestseller list. It was a dream come true.

I have a writing bucket list on the bulletin board in my office that has been there for a few years. This is what it says.

To make my dream a reality will take eight hours of work a day.

"I dreamed I was a romance writer."

I will…

1. Write four books a year.

2. Win a Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award.

3. Win a National Readers Choice Award.

4. Have a USA Today bestseller.

5. Have a New York Times bestseller.

6. Win a Rita Award.

7. Have a book made into a movie.

"I dreamed I was a romance writer."

It all starts Today.

I WRITE.

As of last Thursday, I was able to check off number 4 on my bucket list. Last spring, I checked off my first goal when I drew a line through number 2. My book, A Home for Hannah, won the Reviewer's Choice Award for the best Love Inspired novel of 2012.

I have been blessed, and I know it. I've had some wonderful breaks in my career. Personally, I think my dear, departed husband is doing some arm twisting up in Heaven. He was a big persuasive man who believed in me wholeheartedly. There is no one I would rather have cheering me on.

But what happens after the cheering is over and the congratulations stop pouring in?

They do stop. The world moves on and someone else wins an award or does something noteworthy. What replaces the dream that meant so much?

Sometimes it is harder to be successful than it is to be unsuccessful.

By reaching the peak you've worked toward you are left with only one way to go. Oh, you can cling to the peak for as long as possible, but eventually what goes up…must come down. A wise person prepares for the trip in both directions.

Success does not define us. It doesn't make us skinny. It doesn't solve our troubled relationships. It doesn't make us happy. If will very likely bring a new set of problems.   

I have enjoyed my fifteen minutes of fame. I printed off and framed a clip from the USA Today website for my mother. She's thrilled. I also understand that not everyone enjoys my success. We are human after all. We harbor that little green monster of jealousy inside us even though we keep it buttoned up most of the time. I'm as guilty as the next person in this, but I try hard to feel good when others do better than I have. The green monster gets a few seconds of freedom and then I close the lid on him. Life is too short and precious not to enjoy seeing others succeed.

I have complete confidence that I will check off all the dreams on my bucket list before I'm through. Overconfidence is one of my most serious faults. It leads to as many failures as successes, but it gets me up and charging toward the goal again when I get knocked down. If you stay down, how can you get where you want to go?

I'm thankful today for what God has allowed me to achieve in writing and in all parts of my life. I know full well that none of it would have happened unless it was part of His plan. I'm also prepared to slip down the slope and set my sights on a new goal. That will require me to finish another book so I'd better get writing.

 

You can aid in my next success by picking up a copy of my newest book, Amish Christmas Joy. On sale now.

What have been some of your successes? What have been some of your failures? What's next in your life?   

Ask Elnora--About These Dreams???Lenora Worth

Maybe I'm the only one. But I thought I'd ask and see if anyone else has this happen. Elnora dreams about her characters. And my darling daydreamers, I don't just mean I dream about them. Oh, no. I dream they are literally walking off the pages and following me around. In my dreams, there is this kind of moving sidewalk-merry-go-round type thing and I'm walking on it. I can see my characters alone the way. And every now and then, one of them will hop onto the moving sidewalk with me and start talking. They don't actually talk to me. They talk to each other and I follow them around, listening. It's fun at times and scary at times. Sometimes it's current characters and sometimes it's character from books I've written long ago. These dreams are vivid and full of life. Maybe the moving sidewalk is really the pages of my story, progressing and the characters are moving through those pages. It sure makes for a busy night, let me tell you! Sometimes the characters just walk off the page and disappear. I guess those are the ones who've given me a hard time!

So... is it just me? I'm used to voices in my head during the day, but am I destined to hear them in my sleep, too? I keep thinking of that song by Heart. "These dreams....go on when I close my eyes ... every second of the night I live another life." Do you live another life in your dreams? Do your characters frolic and move through your dreams? Let's discuss our dreams. Do you think writers have vivid dreams because we see words in our heads? And because those voices never seem to go away? What is it about dreams that helps us to be better writers?