The Importance of Protecting Your Dreams

As any writer will appreciate, writing can be a grueling, solitary and thankless endeavor.

While most people fantasize about writing a book, few posses the determination to actually complete one.

There are many voices telling the author to never put pen to paper.

First there are the logical, sensible voices in your head that remind you your masterpiece is unlikely to ever get published by a big publisher, and even if you were lucky enough to earn that badge of honor, you're unlikely to ever earn enough to make the tax man care (see this anonymous post this morning that links to a 2003 story in Salon.com, written by an anonymous 'Jane Austen Doe' titled, "Confessions of a Semi-Successful Author" that reveals the ugly truth about writer compensation).

If the common sense voices in your head aren't enough to discourage you, you must also contend with the soul sucking voices of naysayers. They're the snarky or even well-intentioned unbelievers who kindly remind you: you're nuts to dream of writing a book, others already do it better than you, and hey, why don't you get a real job instead?

The prompt for my post today came indirectly from a question I was asked for a Q&A interview I did at AuthorShock.com.

Debbie Jenkins of AuthorShock asked me to name the single most important thing I wished I knew before I started out in business. To answer the question, I thought back to 20 years ago when I first cut my teeth working for my dad's software startup, and it reminded me of one of my all-time favorite lyrics:

"They say that life's a carousel, spinning fast you've got to ride it well. The world is full of kings and queens, who blind your eyes and steal your dreams..."

-Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell

My short answer was that the entrepreneur (writers are entrepreneurs too!) must protect their dreams. No, I'm not talking about people stealing your ideas. Ideas are a dime a dozen. It's the execution that matters.

Don't let people stop you from dreaming your dreams, and don't let the skeptics derail you from executing on your dreams. Often, those naysayers are criticizing you because they're scared, or they can't see what you see.

Noone will understand your vision until you get out there and show them.

If all writers were fully equipped with a full contingent of common sense genes, most books would never get written and the world would be a poorer place for it.

What's my dream? To build an ebook publishing and distribution platform that helps any author, anywhere in the world, realize their dream of publishing. You can read the full interview at Authorshock.

What's your dream?


P.S. Don't forget to enter the free Editor Unleashed/Smashwords "Why I Write" essay contest. Win $500. Top 50 will be published in an anthology at Smashwords.