How to Dream in 2022

In 1988, one month before my 24th birthday, I eagerly headed off to Japan to teach English at a Tokyo University. As is the case with many expatriates, my journey was less about working as a teacher (I had zero training), and more about fulfilling longings that couldn’t be addressed at home.

Longings, I had a bunch! I wanted to escape the routine of my post-college life, to have an epic adventure on the other side of the world, and to connect in spirit with my father—stationed in Japan during World War II—who had recently died.

Even more meaningful, perhaps, was my personal goal for my time abroad: I boldly decided I was going to write a novel.

My plotted-out strategy was straightforward. By the end of my two-year contract at J.F. Oberlin University, I would have a completed draft—working title: SHADES OF GREY (no relation to FIFTY). With that manuscript I’d secure a top literary agent who would place my bestseller-to-be with a prestigious New York publisher. From my late twenties on, I would make my living as a novelist. I would BE a novelist.

I never made a back-up plan.

If a famous clairvoyant had appeared in my 200-square-foot Tokyo apartment in the late eighties and predicted that, yes, I would sell a novel…but it would take 33 years, what would I have done with that information? 

What would my reaction have been if I knew that my biggest life ambition would not be realized until I was 57, had been married for 24 years, was a mother to two young adults, my oldest child the age when I decided to start writing in earnest? What if I knew in advance that I’d work for much of my adult life as a teacher and a freelance writer, as I continued to chase my novel dream, often wondering if the whole thing was futile?

If some clairvoyant had foretold the commitment, the pain, the rejections, the buckets I’d fill with tears in those decades between dream and dream-come-true, I suspect I would have said no thank you. I’m not up for what you’re describing. I probably would have gone into advertising. And it would have been a big mistake. 

On the cusp of 2022, we are living in a moment when dreams are being put on hold. So many businesses have shuttered; others can’t launch. (And what is a business, if not someone’s dream?) Colleges are veering back to online learning. Young adults can’t pursue the grand adventures they’ve been yearning for, at home or abroad. We’re all trying to make magic and connections happen behind our computer screens and expression–muting masks. Dreams are not having their finest moment right now. 

And I’m here to tell you this: Keep dreaming. 

If you want it, and you’re willing to work tirelessly, face rejection, and keep going (and going and going), it will be yours. It might not happen on the timeline you’d like. In fact, it very likely won’t. The universe has its own plan. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. 

Take it from a dream long-hauler. 

If you’re struggling to get started, my suggestion is to start by visualizing your dream. Then plant it so deeply in your heart that it takes root in your cells and can’t escape. This is the part where you commit, body, blood, and spirit. But beware! Once it’s really in you, your dream is going to rankle you unless you attend to it, so be prepared to water and feed and coddle that thing. Whether it’s finishing school or taking a class in something new, switching to a job you actually like, building a better connection with your family, finally inking that book deal, opening a sushi bar, or changing the world in your own unique way, your dream is going to demand your attention.

My rooted dream forced me to spend long nights and many weekends holed-up in my tiny Tokyo apartment hunched over an early NEC laptop with keys only my fingers could read because they were in kana. I spent hours, days, weeks making up a story because once the dream took hold the alternative–not doing it–felt terrible. 

There are very few self-driving dreams. Most require work. So use this time to study or get the skills you need. If you’re working on a creative project, don’t fritter your dream-time staring at YouTube videos of other performers doing what you want to do. Make your own content. Don’t waste your time being jealous, or spend one ounce of energy drooling over other people’s successes. Turn off the distractions and do YOUR thing.

And never utter these words: I can’t.

Or these: It won’t happen.

And definitely not these: I’m too old. (That’s just offensive.)

You can use your time wisely, whatever age you are.

I’d written over half of my first novel by the time I left Tokyo and headed to Luxembourg to teach English at the American International School. Long summer vacations gave me the chance to keep working on—and improving—my writing. Endlessly. Assiduously. At a fiction workshop in the Netherlands one August, I heard about a low-residency MFA program in Vermont. I emptied my savings account and enrolled. Those were two years of study in which I actually learned to write a novel, instead of just pretending to know. And in the next several years I devoted myself to writing one that ultimately didn’t sell. I was crushed, but life kept rolling. By that time, I had a family and had turned to essay writing and journalism. I sold my memoir, TROVE, three years ago, and while that scratched a deep itch for a book deal, and gave me the satisfaction of telling a true story, the novel dream was still demanding my attention, and I was still watering and feeding it, keeping it alive.

Then came the pandemic, and the quiet. Inside of that loneliness in the summer of 2020, I tapped into what I’d felt all those years ago in my Tokyo apartment. I found the root of my dream and the focus to write again. WEDNESDAYS AT ONE poured out of me in three months. Thirty-three years of writing practice, persistence, heartbreak, recovering from rejection, and belief went into that novel.

And so did something else: my imagination. 

And this is the part that I think is key to any creative endeavor. James R. Doty, M.D. explains it brilliantly in Into the Magic Shop, but here’s my quick take. 

When I was ready to sell my book, every morning I went into my basement room—surrounded by crystals, the air thick with incense—to start the day with a meditation. I envisioned myself holding my published novel in my hands. I turned the imaginary pages, felt its heft, and pretended to sign books for a long line of people that stood before me clutching their hardcover copies. I even pictured the agent (the one I didn’t yet have) and the editor (the one I didn’t yet have) who would be alongside me on the journey. I saw the three of us strutting through New York City together

Despite the reality that publishing is brutally competitive right now, and agents and editors are burned out, I wasn’t deterred.

Then came the moment. 

When I saw that Zibby Owens of Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books podcast fame, had started an equitable, author-centered publishing house with writers and readers building a community together, I knew I needed to sell my book to her. 

Down in my basement every morning, I envisioned exactly how it would go, and then some. I literally mocked up a photo of myself with the Zibby Books label, as if the company had already accepted my novel. I lit a Mom’s Don’t Have Time to Read Books candle during my meditation. And I pictured myself accepting an offer. When I felt ready, I reached out. Then, 33 years, almost to the day that I started writing a novel in Japan, I had a book deal. 

My Lord, it would have been sweet to sell my first novel in my late twenties and launch a long career as a novelist. But is that how it would have gone? I don’t know. I really don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. The dream is here, right now, right on time.