I see you there, in the thin winter dawn, on your way to work. I see you on your way home too, in the frigid twilight of another forgettable day. I see the dream glowing warmly inside you. That dream is as familiar to me as my porch light.
A dream is a song your heart sings, right? Its what Martin Luther King had. You gotta have one. Otherwise, how ya gonna make a dream come true?
I want you to extinguish your dream.
As long as that dream is your identity, you'll never risk it. Your unwritten pages will be worth more than your written ones. I can't give you a new identity; you'll have to find something else to burn inside you, to fuel you through life's slow and mushy sections.
If you actually put pen to paper, perhaps you will become famous. But the odds are against it. That's what makes artists courageous. They exchange their fantasies of what might be in order to create what is.
That's also why humility is part of creating just about anything. I know there are plenty of artists who seem stuffed with their own cultural importance. To toss your own work into the unending river of human creativity, and hope that it will surface, even if only briefly - that takes guts. And maybe some bravado, too.
It takes an even deeper fortitude to know that what is so very dear to you may end up not even being the froth on a wave.
Trade the theoretical perfection of your undone work for the truth of what you can complete.
If a little puffery helps you out with that, you're forgiven.
As long as you actually write.
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