Fantasies

So part and parcel with taking a first major step towards being a "real" author (let's not waste time arguing this one and all just accept that I'm still mostly faking this) is spending more time than usual watching the fantasy film reels.

You know you have them too. The Walter Mitty moments that you occasionally let yourself play out, where you charm Jon Stewart with your amazing wit (because clearly he wants to talk about your pointless humor book on The Daily Show) and he loves you so much he makes you a regular correspondent, or you sell enough books that you get to quit your day job AND take a real vacation, or you even just see someone reading your book on public transportation and feel overwhelming satisfaction at knowing that person paid to read the words you wrote.

I mean, they don't all have to be EPIC fantasy, right?

I wonder though, how much "it's possible that if everything goes well I might..." is positive, and how much is negative.


On the one hand delusion (because let's be honest, Jon Stewart would never hire a woman so much taller than he is) is a powerful motivator. When you get the 77th rejection that month, holding onto the hope that if you just try again, and revise the intro, and find the right agent to query, then, someday, you'll be able to live this fantasy life may be the only thing that keeps you from giving up entirely.

This is why it's good to also have the lower-level fantasies.

But I wonder if the tendency to write our own fairy tale versions of our lives makes it harder to appreciate the good things in the lives we have. It's the reality TV effect; if you constantly set the carrot at the massive mansion, or the bestseller list, or the film version that vaults you to superstardom forever, how can you be happy with an unarguable--but less spectacular--success?

Artistic types already have a hard time clearing the bars they set for themselves (at least I always have), because it's an extremely competitive field, and there's not a lot of success to go around.

We also have a hard time not continually moving the bar higher, just that much further out of reach.

Getting an article placed or landing an agent or getting your book onto a store shelf IS a huge success...until you've done it, and then the next achievement has to be way bigger to register as really-worth-celebrating.

I think it's human nature (just like it's human nature to daydream about the best-case-scenario), I just wonder if sometimes it's a part of our nature--like, I dunno, murderous urges--that we should try to suppress rather than indulge.

That said, please feel free to direct any calls from Jon Stewart my way. Surely they'll be coming in soon...