Ambition

Ambition is a strange thing. I always value ambition in other people. By that I mean, I like people who clearly want something and work to get it. A lack of ambition is terribly unattractive. 

But when it comes to my own ambition, I admit, I'm a little shy. I mean, some of my ambitions are fairly common and I have no problem talking about them: own a house with an office I can cover in bookshelves, always have a dog (I can't decide if I want a husky or a German shepherd first), drink coffee, etc. All of those are achievable.

My big ambition is to publish a book. Sometimes, it even occurs to me to dream about that book doing well. The biggest pipe dream is that so many people will buy the book I don't have to have a job to support my writing habit.

I don't like to think about that because it seems so arrogant. Who am I to think I can write a book anyone besides me would want to read? That's the thing about the stories I write- I write them because I would want to read them. 

A few days ago, I was revising Black and Gold, listening to Disney music because that's the playlist I listened to when I wrote it over the summer. I reached the end of a section and just sort of stopped. And then I though Why not this book? 

God knows it's nowhere near ready to be read by anyone other than me and maybe my mom (because my mom is awesome). But it could be ready. I could make it good enough. That is an incredibly arrogant thought, because I am haunted by all of the bad writing that I have done. The amount of bad versus good words is still heavily skewed toward bad, trust me. But I couldn't shake that thought.

Ambition is a strange thing. It makes me want to hand my book to a stranger in the hopes that they'll fall in love with it, even though I know they're more likely to throw it back at me.

But maybe, just maybe, one of those strangers won't. 

Revision and Christmas

Congratulations to those of you in college who, like me, made it through the semester! I'm pretty excited to be done. Honestly, until yesterday finishing the semester was more exciting than the fact that Christmas is in two days. 

Now I have time to read for fun again. I just sat in one of the big leather chairs in my parents' living room yesterday and finished a book I did not have to write an essay on or relate to another book. It was glorious. 

In other exciting news (well, exciting to me), I have come up with a title for The Stupid Book: Black and Gold. Voila! Today, after I finish writing this, I am going to drink my tea and work on some back story for a couple of the characters. Then, probably tomorrow, I will begin revising in earnest before school starts again and homework eats away my time. In my perfect world I'd be finished with one complete revision before January 11 (when I head back to school) but more realistically, it'll be more like a 75% revision. Still, revision is going to happen.

But I have a title and I have time and I miss my main characters. It will be fun.

I hope you all enjoy spending time with your family and friends. To my fellow students, I hope you enjoy sleeping in and being lazy as much as I do. Eat good food. Laugh. And have a very merry Christmas.

Elizabeth