Nothing Worth Anything Comes Easy

“If your dreams don’t scare you, they aren’t big enough.” 

Lowell Lundstrum

I was twenty-three years old; two weeks from going into my technical senior year of college. Since Covid had disrupted all of our lives, I, just like many others, was granted an extra year of eligibility for collegiate basketball. Thoughts that entire summer had been rambling in my head. What am I going to do once I’m out of college? What is a passion of mine other than sports? I had not come up with any answers yet. I love sports—that much is well-known, but I love playing sports. It had not entered my mind doing much else in that department. Nonetheless, I was getting a degree in sport management. I figured it would somehow work itself out for me to work in the sports world. But how? That, I didn’t know.

I was put onto a show called Castle by my sister Liz, and in a funny way, it changed my life. Now the show is a basic cop show. There is a crime committed before the opening credits—the detectives find clues and gather evidence and suspects—they almost die (in like every episode), and then they arrest the bad guy and all is good again. This show, however, is a tad bit different. The main character, Richard Castle, is a best-selling crime fiction writer. The idea is he is rich and famous and knows everyone in New York. He somehow gets involved with the other main character, Detective Kate Beckett, and he quickly becomes infatuated with her. He pulls some strings to shadow her and eventually writes books about her (and also solves every single case single handedly) and they end up together in the end blah blah blah. In the early episodes, they focus heavily on him being a writer. 

Now, how does this relate to me whatsoever?

Well, like I said, I was looking for an unknown passion of mine, which is even harder than it sounds. In the past year, I had started reading heavily. My mom and I had our own little “book club.” We would read the same book and then discuss our thoughts about it. We started with a book called, Matched, by Allie Condie. It’s a dystopian book series, which is my absolute favorite type of subgenre. The Giver had always been my favorite book growing up. The Hunger Games and the Divergent series were written later on which were also big interests of mine. I got so into Matched I would find myself awake in my college apartment at 3 a.m. churning away at the novel. Reading became a passion of mine.

How do these coincide?

As I mentioned, I was looking for an unknown passion. I didn’t really care that in the show everyone knew Richard Castle or he was filthy rich, I was more fascinated by the idea of him sitting down and writing his own imaginative ideas on paper in a creative way so that people would fall in love with his story (yes, I know this show isn’t real life. Much like the video games my dad always told me aren’t real—jokes on him I am the best GM the NFL has ever seen). 

This brings me to where I made a comment with Liz and my mom in the room saying, “I could see myself doing that.” Half joking, half-serious (definitely serious), I awaited their responses. As I said in my “About” section, they were exceedingly positive. Remember my last post? The Beauty of Giving? Well, that’s what they did to me that day. They gave me a dream, and I ran with it.

Fast-forward a couple weeks—I was settled in my apartment and started to brainstorm. I knew dystopia was going to be the overall genre since I loved it so much, but what about the plot? It amazes me reading dystopian and science-fiction works because there is an entirely different world those writers have to build sometimes. The ideas are so deep and uncommon to what we know it’s mesmerizing. There’s no way I can achieve that, I thought. Where the hell do I even start? The more I thought about how infeasible this was, the more defeated I was. I had seeded a dream into my brain, one that lasted only a few weeks before I realized it was too difficult—too out of my league—too impossible. That is, until a revelation hit: What dream is ever easy? When is the last time someone who accomplished something special made it happen because it was simple and they just fell into the success. If it’s something I truly wanted, I’d have to work for it.

Now, I didn’t even know if this was something I had any type of talent in. I figured I’d give it my all, and if I wasn’t any good who cares? It’s not like anyone knew about it. I never told Liz or my mom I had started anything, so if it got to a point where I was self-aware enough that I was atrocious at it—I’d just throw it out and move on. 

I brainstormed hard, wrote out ideas on paper like my life depended on it, and came up with a story I thought would be worth reading. I had all these pages of notes where I wanted the story to go. I thought I had too many notes, that it would last me hundreds of thousands of words. By the time I finished my first chapter, I was completely out of notes. There’s no way I can do this, I thought again. I am not that creative. I’m already out of gas. But again, nothing worth anything is that simple. I proceeded to just outline chapter by chapter as I wrote, thinking of ideas on the fly. I knew how the story started and how it ended. What I didn’t know is how it got there. It was so gratifying; it never felt like “work,” just spitballing idea after idea. I would be in the middle of class and something would shoot to my brain and I’d immediately take out my phone and write it in my notes so I didn’t forget it, and then later on implement it into my novel.

I never experienced writer’s block either—granted there were certainly inconsistencies since I had a basketball season and classes I had to juggle. Eventually, I broke my wrist and was left in a hard cast for a month, which obviously hurt my timeline as well. Nevertheless, I grinded and about ten months later—first draft complete. 

I’m so thankful for my mom and my grandfather, who took on the challenge of helping me edit. My Grandpa, who is notoriously known for his prominent language skills, helped with a ton of the grammar editing, and my mom helped me flush out the story and find answers I still had questions to in the novel. I sincerely would never have done it without them, along with the everlasting support of others. 

Over 100,000 thousand words (I know that seems a bit much but trust me it’s needed) and like five drafts later, I’ve completed the novel to the best of my ability. I’m biased, of course, but I truly love the story. In my quest of trying to pick up a literary agent, no matter how this ends, published or not, I’m proud of the accomplishment and grateful for all the support around me.

Nothing worth anything comes easy. Keep going. Follow your dreams. Thanks for reading.