I may have mentioned that I’m a daydreamer, and I’m pretty sure that I’ve called myself a writer, too. I know I’ve confessed that I am thus far an unpublished writer, but that I have decided that getting published is the next step. But why have I only just now decided to try and get published?

Well, that’s sort of a circle: I never intended to get published, so I didn’t write anything intended for publication, which meant that I’d never written anything good enough to get published, which led me to feel that I couldn’t write anything good enough to get published, which reinforced my lack of motivation to get published, which …

You see where this is going, right? All it really took was a decision to get published to break that nonsensical chain; but that decision was hard to make and far from easy to implement. The reason for that is pretty straightforward: I’m a daydreamer first, and a writer second. So switch them around, you might say. Not that easy, I’m afraid.

Folks like me (that’s lavenders, if you’ve read my last post) can be some of the very best of storytellers (among other things), but it requires a great deal of focus. Unfortunately, that focus doesn’t come easy, at least for me. I titled this blog Adrift in Daydreams for a reason. Yes, I daydream almost constantly, but I don’t want to give you the mistaken impression that I stick to one daydream for days or even hours on end. Sometimes I do, but generally I drift from one dream to the next according to the shifting currents of my aetheric ocean, and staying focused on one story to the exclusion of all the rest long enough, and with the appropriate intensity, to write a whole book … well that takes some serious willpower. Especially when the story hits a rough patch or I start to doubt my abilities. Self-doubt, I have come to learn, is a constant companion for every writer. It takes a lot of guts to put yourself out there like that, and a lot of hard, hard work to get to the point where you can even try to put yourself out there.

So yeah, I’m a regular fire hose of stories, but I’m a fire hose with a lot of tiny holes all along its length. The result is that I’m spraying tiny little stories all over the place, and the force of the story coming out the nozzle is severely diminished by that loss of pressure, so to speak. Patching up those little holes is a tiring and never ending job, let me tell you, and it’s sort of against my nature.

Why bother then? Well, that’s the real point of this post, isn’t it?

There’s a long story behind my decision to start writing professionally, but that’s for another time. That’s the story of How I Made the Decision to Write, not the story of Why I Write.

I have been working on the same story for several years now, and I’ve been told by some friends who used to work in the industry that I could go looking for a publisher right now. I’m not quite ready for that yet, so it’ll wait. The point is, for a long time I really struggled with forcing myself to focus. What was the point? Quit a job I hated so I could devote myself full-time to another job I hated? Because make no mistake – I hated writing. It was really hard work, and visions of all the other things writers have to do loomed on the horizon: interviews, readings, book signings, and all that. My understanding is that those things are necessary if you’re going to get yourself out there enough to sell enough books to make a living. I had no interest in any of those things, or the intense and painful work of sticking around in this dimension long enough to actually tell a story. Best case scenario: I become a rich and famous author. That’s the best case? I didn’t want to be famous, and while being rich could be nice, money by itself just wasn’t a good enough goal to motivate me. Sure, I wouldn’t mind trying on the title of Millionaire, but money just wasn’t a good enough reason. I hated my job, but it paid good money and had excellent benefits. Money couldn’t drive me to write, and fame was no golden carrot, so I was really stuck.

Flashback time. I like going to visit psychics for readings and such. Yes, lots of them are fakes, but I still enjoy it. I do, however, try to give them as little information about myself as I can. If they’re going to con me, I try to make them work for it. It’s entertaining if nothing else. Sometimes, though, I run into one that is really impressive, and once I went to a woman who performed “Angel Readings.” Basically, she would sit with you and act as the mouth piece for your guardian angel, and as an interesting method of centering herself she would make a chalk(?) drawing of your angel while she did the reading. You got to keep the drawing, and it was fun. This woman asked about my writing (which I pointedly did not mention), and said a few other things of interest to me but not to you. Most importantly, she said my angel called itself Einstein. Okay, whatever. Einstein. Sure.

Years later, I’m struggling to find a reason to write. My wife and I decide to take a little mini-vacation and go to the Dublin Irish Festival, which is a wonderful event held every year in Dublin, Ohio. I strongly recommend that you go, if you ever get the chance. Being a storyteller myself, I decide to go see several of the traditional Irish storytellers. Who knows, maybe I can learn something and be entertained. They were all great, and I look forward to going back and seeing them again; but the important bits weren’t the stories themselves, but what several of them said as they were wrapping up their sessions. Keep in mind these fellows were all in different tents speaking at different times. This wasn’t some grand collection of storytellers gathered together for an hour or two of stories; they were scattered all over the festival.

The first fellow shared a famous quote that I’m sure most of us have heard: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein said that, of course, and there’s a bit more to the quote than that, but that’s the part most people hear. That was fun and neat, but nothing I hadn’t heard before.

Then the second fellow wrapped up his session by defending the importance of stories. It was, appropriately, a story (that I’m paraphrasing):

“A woman, the mother of a precocious and exceptionally intelligent child, learned that she would have the opportunity to meet Albert Einstein and have a short chat with him. Elated, she decided that she would take a pen and notepad along and ask him what books she should read to her child to best encourage his knowledge and learning. When the time came, she asked Einstein her question, and he said, “Fairy tales,” and nodded thoughtfully. The woman was understandably taken aback, and after taking a second to recover, she asked, “What then?” And Einstein smiled and said, “More fairy tales.”

Now, I don’t know if that story is exactly true (this came from a storyteller, after all), but I have read a number of other Einstein quotes that support the sentiment if not the historical event.

“When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking.”

“To know is nothing. To imagine is everything.”

I also found mention that Einstein credited his genius to his mother’s reading of folk and fairy tales to him as a child, and my understanding is that he came up with the theory of relativity by imagining himself sitting on a photon. How’s that for the power of imagination?

On the drive home from Ohio after the festival, my wife and I were discussing the storytellers and how I thought it was so cool that Einstein had said those things (I had never heard the fairy tale story before). Then I remembered what the angel reading lady had told me: my guardian angel’s name was Einstein.

And just like that, I had my Why. I’m not likely to make any significant advances in science, and neither am I inclined to become a politician or an activist who might cure some of society’s ills. But I can tell a story, and I can encourage the imaginations of people who will do those things. I can contribute most by doing exactly what I do: daydream. Will it take hard work to translate those daydreams into a shape that other people can benefit from? Sadly, hell yes. That’s okay, though, because I can make myself do the work if I have a good enough reason. Imagination is my reason.

Now, do I think that my guardian angel is Albert Einstein sans corporeal form? I rather doubt it; but that doesn’t matter, because he (or she, or it; how does that work with guardian angels, anyway?) got the point across with just a name. It took me a good long while to figure it out, but I got there eventually (and undoubtedly with some more help from Einstein – talk about a cosmic two-by-four upside the head). Do I still get frustrated and depressed because the work is really hard? You bet your ass I do. Do I still get pulled away from the work by the currents of my imagination? All the time. Do I still need to develop some self-discipline? Pffft; ya think? Man, I so wish I could just order some determination from Amazon. That would make it sooo much easier.

So there it is, my Why and how I came to recognize it. I sincerely hope that hearing how I found my Why will help you figure out yours, whatever it is that you do. Sometimes all it takes is some thought, and sometimes it takes a lot of thought and maybe some soul searching. Maybe my Why will turn out to be yours, too, and that’s cool. I’m happy to share, and happier still to think that maybe I helped someone else finish that all important quest. Take it from me, it’s an immense relief and a profound joy to have a Why.

Next time maybe I’ll do something really crazy like tell a story or something. I mean one I pulled from my ocean of dreams, not an anecdote from my personal life. I think it’s about time, don’t you?

Until then, happy dreaming, but keep your eyes on the road.

William