Twenty-four years ago, I sat with my friend Matt outside the administration building of the Broome public school where both our parents worked. Our afternoon custom was to kill time until our parents drove us home. Sometimes we’d kick a ball beneath the mango trees. If we wanted a dose of air-conditioning, we’d take turns firing the air-powered nail-gun across one of the empty woodwork classrooms.
This particular day, Matt turned to me and held up Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone:
‘You need to read this.’
I replied with something inappropriate that roughly translates to:
‘No I don’t.’
I spent my early years in submission to the public school Code of Cool: don’t touch a book unless the presiding grownup threatens your lunchtime liberty or dessert quota. I certainly wasn’t going to contravene the Code for a book centred on some four-eyed wand-wielding nerd.
Yet I did end up reading it. Many, many times over. I don’t know how Matt managed to convince me, though I like to think sorcery was involved.
As she has for many, J. K. Rowling gifted me a portal, a stargate, a wardrobe door into a world of imagination. By the time I finished reading The Philosopher’s Stone I’d decided that I had to be a writer. What Rowling had given me, I wanted to give others. It was something worth devoting my life to.
The Dream
At age eleven I began to put my life in order. I read about writers, I read about writing. I kept notepads with half-formed ideas for stories I’d one day pen. I tried to think like a writer: every circumstance an opportunity for observation. After all, any seed of insight could blossom into the next New York Times bestseller.
I wrote my first novel manuscript at sixteen. I took units on creative writing at university, watched lectures by famous writers online, and listened to writing podcasts. In my twenties I took a year without pay (courtesy of a gracious wife) to work on what was, by then, my third novel manuscript. I even unintentionally acquired that diverse backlog of jobs that writers often have: I’d coached tennis, taught and performed as a musician, interned at my church, been a children’s worker, a research analyst, a case manager in the justice system… the list goes on. Each job role gave me new insights into people, life, and story.
I’ve devoted the past twenty-four years of my life to becoming a paid novelist. I’m now thirty-four and the author of four and a half novel manuscripts and a bunch of short fiction. As I write this, I have no published works, long or short. I’ve never been paid for anything I’ve written.
The Murder
I’m reasonably happy with my fourth novel and I’ve sent it out to dozens of literary agents to no avail. No surprises there: in the world of writing, amassing rejection letters is one mark of a true writer, like the scars of a grizzled master swordsman. A badge of honour. But, for the time being, I’ve decided to stop shopping it around. I’m ninety thousand words into my fifth novel and it is shaping up to be my best work yet. But I’ve also decided to stop writing that book. In fact, I’ve decided to murder my dream of being a paid novelist.
Why give up my lifelong dream when I’m closer than ever to fulfilling it? Why abandon the years of labour and sweat I’ve invested?
Missing in Action
A few months ago I stood in the park, berating my two-year-old son for taking too long when it came time to leave. As he dutifully walked to the car, I gave him a talking-to about obeying me when I call and not making people wait. Important lessons to be sure. But he’s two. At one of his favourite places in the world. I gave him no warning that we’d soon be leaving. No time to adjust his expectations. I just demanded he come at my bidding, treating him more like a drone than God’s beloved son, in training for manhood. My son. My delight. This wasn’t unusual: my son (and wife) had been suffering my short temper for some time.
Not to make excuses, but I’ve always had a two-star relationship with quality sleep. At the time, it was my habit to rise several hours before my son to write. As a part-time government worker and stay-at-home dad, I had also been taking the opportunity to write during his afternoon nap. Sometimes I’d write in the evenings too. As for the time I spent driving, washing dishes, or standing in the park—that was brainstorming time ahead of my next writing session. Whatever I was doing, part of my brain would be industriously working on the current project. I was tired.
I had actually reduced my paid work hours in order to be more present in family life, but in practice, because of my dream, I was spending 95% of my time MIA.
A Time for Everything
Around that time, I’d been meditating on the Teacher’s words in Ecclesiastes 3:
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build.
The time I had with my family was passing me by. I was often physically present but I knew my own heart: I was elsewhere. I was missing out. And so were they. My family weren’t getting the best of me; they were barely getting mediocre me.
That’s when I realised that in my season of life I probably don’t have space for things outside family, friends, church, and something that puts tacos on the table. Given you don’t get paid for a book until you’ve written and sold it, striving to become a novelist doesn’t fit into any of those categories.
Everything Is Vapour!
Recently, our pastor preached a series in Ecclesiastes with a topical focus on busyness.[1] He described how the word “meaningless” that appears in some translations of Ecclesiastes is probably better translated as “vapour” or “mist”: something that exists for a moment and then is gone. With that in mind, the start of Ecclesiastes 1 could be translated, “Vapour! Vapour! … Utterly vapour! Everything is vapour!” If I don’t pause to enjoy the good things that God has placed before me, they’ll soon pass me by.
Not long after that incident at the park I wrote to a good friend of mine, telling him that I was having second thoughts on sinking so much energy into writing; that it seemed like all God wanted from me was to be his faithful servant. At this point in my life, that looks like being really, actually present in any given moment with my wife, son, and soon-to-emerge daughter. I know that all my wife and son want is a husband and father they can count on.
Enslaved by a Dream
It’s taken me far too long to realise that all these years I’ve been enslaved by my childhood dream. Over the past decade, when supportive family and friends asked me how my writing was progressing, I’d often feel guilt, embarrassment, despair, futility, irritation, or all the above. Not because they’d asked the question but because I felt I hadn’t achieved anything worthwhile. I had nothing to show for all my straining. I’d feel the same if I haven’t hit my self-imposed word count at the end of a day: that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, telling me I’d fallen short.
In Galatians 5:1 Paul writes, “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.” How was my daily experience one of freedom? I found myself a slave, chained inside a lightless cell with one circular wall and no exits. I’d somehow turned writing into my greatest consolation and love, and it had become my bitter master. Thankfully, in our darkest moments of slavery and futility, God is there. Turning on the light, he extended his hand through the brickwork of my dank cell and spoke:
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)
The problem with having a vision for achieving something great in this temporal world is that there are hidden costs. And I’m not prepared to pay those costs anymore.
Freedom
Over the years, I wrestled with setting the pen aside. I wondered how I’d feel if I never made it in the writing game. Previously—enslaved to my dream as I was—I found the question distressing. Now that I’ve made the decision to shelve my dream, I feel the freest I have in twenty-four years.
Those feelings of failure? Ashes on the wind.
The despair? Like the ghost of a nightmare.
The short temper? Let’s call that one a work in progress.
My desire to be a novelist hasn’t evaporated. But in my current situation, the cost–benefit analysis doesn’t cash out. My primary responsibilities are to my God, my wife, and my children. And, at this time in my life, if I’m going to be devoted to those duties, pursuing my childhood dream can’t be in my sights. I’m not saying I won’t ever write another novel or try to publish. But I have decided to stop the pursuit of a single-minded vision.
A Better Dream
Killing my dream sounds over the top. But as a Christian, I’m into resurrections. Revelation 21 paints the picture of a new heaven and a new earth: a place without death or mourning or pain, where God dwells among his people and his glory banishes all darkness. That’s my dream. So I don’t need to seize everything now because this earthly life is only the beginning of the story. For his people, God promises far greater things to come. And I suspect that, if not later in this life, there will be plenty of time to write novels in eternity.
