I've answered a lot of interview questions over the years (google interview and my name--links here would clutter the post) and I've been asked one thing again and again (whether in interviews and or writers, artists, etc.)...
How did you do it?
How does someone become an author? An artist? How does one make a go of a dream, really?
Here are some tips from me.
Don't go to the birthday party. Skip the picnic. Don't binge watch seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Forget cooking dinner tonight. Sleep? Not tonight. Don't answer the phone when it rings. Take a pass on that invitation to go shopping.
Sit your happy little tooshie down and work. Work when you're tired. Work when you're sick. Work when the sound of laughter and fun streams in your window on a beam of golden sunshine and every instinct begs you to go join in the fray. Work when you could be laughing. Work when you could be sleeping. Work. Work. Work. When you're tired of working, rub your eyes really hard and do five jumping jacks...then go back to work.
Eventually, you'll have something other people other people want to see. Celebrate at that point--go out and live life for a day or a weekend or an hour.
Then? Sit back down and go back to work.
You give up moments. You lose forever times in the real world in your dedication to the fictional characters or to the lines on the page or to the haze of imagination.
But you'll have a shot at the dream.
At my feet lay the goofiest dog I've ever met and a fat and mean cat glared at us both from the doorway. I'd just awakened and left the barn that we call home, leaving my children sleeping inside. The children and the barn aren't perfect, not by standards set by those who set standards about that sort of thing, but I wouldn't want it any other way. My children are beautiful, they make me proud, and our house might look like a barn on the outside, but it is clearly a home within.
The dog isn't the prettiest dog and has no pedigree. He's a neurotic part black lab, his family roots as diverse as my own. The cat was a stray, found in our backyard, who is too expensive for a cat and not even a very nice one most of the time.
We're not rich, we don't live exotic lives. Nothing about any of it says 'happiness' according to everything I'd been taught to expect.
And that was what made me so content. I guess I always believed every happy ever after has a handsome prince. I think I always thought comfort came from money, nice things, proving you were better--faster, stronger, more lovely, whatever.
I grew up with the notion that if you find the happy ever after, you live in a house with a white picket fence and a sports car and an suv, both new, in the driveway.
Prince Charming? Well, I have two princes and one wonderful princess. I'm not unhappy without the prince and neither are they...so did I just want him like the fence and the car payment? Something I thought would make me happy, but I already AM?
