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The Shadowland of Dreams
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Many a young person tells me he wants to be a writer.
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I always encourage such people,
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but I also explain that there’ a big difference
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between “being a writer” and writing.
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In most cases these individuals are dreaming of wealth and fame,
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not the long hours alone at the typewriter.
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“You’ve got to want to write,”
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I say to them, “not want to be a writer.”
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The reality is that writing is a lonely, private and poor-paying affair.
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For every writer kissed by fortune,
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there are thousands more whose longing is never requited.
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Even those who succeed often know long periods of neglect and poverty.
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I did.
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When I left a 20-year career in the Coast Guard to become a freelance writer,
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I had no prospects at all.
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What I did have was a friend with whom I’d grown up in Henning, Tennessee.
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George found me my home —
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a cleaned-out storage room in the Greenwich Village apartment building
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where he worked as superintendent.
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It didn’t even matter that it was cold and had no bathroom.
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Immediately I bought a used manual typewriter and felt like a genuine writer.
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After a year or so, however,
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I still hadn’t received a break and began to doubt myself.
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It was so hard to sell a story that I barely made enough to eat.
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But I knew I wanted to write.
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I had dreamed about it for years.
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I wasn’t going to be one of those people who die wondering,
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“What if?” I would keep putting my dream to the test —
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even though it meant living with uncertainty and fear of failure.
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This is the Shadowland of hope,
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and anyone with a dream must learn to live there.