---In my head ...I dream.---

Of course, it is a dream that I work to someday craft, through hot tears and sweaty palms, copious amounts of post-it notes and scribbled on napkins, clunky typewriters and heated laptops, sleepless nights and countless sketches into the firm and heavy reality of a book. For four years now I have been hard at work, dreaming up plot and characters and retching up beautiful chunks of story. My aspiration is to make my dream into a reality.

Every November I partake in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) where I join thousands of writers in a race to write 50,000 words in 30 days. I first joined in November 2006 and I've finished each year with more than 50,000 words under my belt. Instead of writing separate stories for each NaNoWriMo, I've been working on just one, the story of Ayuhan Ethereal. I plan to continue writing his story until I finish it and, as of NaNoWriMo 2008, I've finally breached the halfway point of his story.
During the other months of the year, I walk around with a printed copy of my novel, editing with a chainsaw, revising with an axe, and refining with a scalpel. And within the decade, there just might be a shelf with my name on it in bookstores nationwide.

So my dream is in the Frankenstein process of becoming a reality.

Of course, it isn't so much of a stab at fame and fortune (although if they did happen to come along it would be an unexpected ((and very much appreciated)) accident), but rather...Well...Not a goal, not an item on the bucket list, and not even a necessity, but rather all those things at once. It is a thing that I have to do. Like all carbon-based lifeforms must breathe, I, as a storyteller, must write. I must tell stories. There isn't a question about it, no doubts. Just resolute understanding, an internal calling, that this is what I must do. There are these people inside me, sharing the cataloged spaces of my sanity, and more of them keep arriving every day, loudly announcing their names and heaving baggage and suitcases of their story, relations, and problems into my arms. And I reply with, "Yes, please come in, let's have a cup of tea and how about you tell me all about yourself. Cream or sugar?"

It can't end there, though. These people and their baggage of tales cannot (and will not) stay. They have to be moved into their own world, and I, like a medium, will channel them from place to place. True, the process of writing can echo the toil and effort put into scaling Mt. Everest, but it work is of no importance. It is getting the story out that matters, bringing the breath of life to characters and spinning the fabric of their worlds so that others may know them. Every mile from the village where the characters first meet and onward to the base camps of plot, fighting through fatigue and snow drifts, choking and gasping through asphyxiation, every reeling, tottering step through storms and walls of wind, the writer climbs on, urging the characters onward, upward, onto the precipices of the Col, over the thin ridges, with only the thin rope of story to cling to, until finally, cold and sunburned, they reach the pinnacle...

And damn. It is breathtaking, the view from the top. It feels like the horizon has tried to stretch your heart, pulling the beating muscle out of your body to every distant line. It only lasts for a few minutes though, before it is time, once again, to follow the rope of story, back down the mountain, back down from the climax, into the end. Through it all, the writer was there, guiding the characters through the plot and story.

That is the role of a writer. And it is something that cannot be denied.

So (after that long analogy), I stand, humbled and smiling, at the work that I have done so far. Over 170,000 words in my Microsoft Document, a printed actual book form of my process (cover and all), and a firm determination to see my dream through into a reality.



...And, lawl, I promised myself that I wouldn't write a novel...

Best of luck to every "I Dream" contest entrant! 8D

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In My Head
Sketched out first in pencil
Edited and colored in Photoshop CS3
Time: Many hours (I forgot how many, but it took up most of my free time for a week)
References: None
From left to right: Eugene, myself, Ayuhan, and Caratacus.

Textures from CG Textures: [link]
And I want to give a big thanks to for her amazing Digital Paint tutorial! [link]
I would have been lost, flailing around in Photoshop like an idiot, without you. <3
And I also want to thank:
for giving me advice and refining tips. The end product looks so much better! XD
And for being there to bounce ideas off of and generally helping me while I wailed and flailed at her over the AIM.
And for giving me advice and letting me glance at her legs and hands for help with Ayuhan. 8'D

And thanks to my boys, Ayuhan, Eugene, and Caratacus for obvious reasons.