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.