Fateful Decisions

Last week I dreamed about Terry Brooks. Only he was much younger than in real life. He had dark hair, and broad shoulders, and dressed a bit 90’s. I don’t generally dream about real people I’ve never met. It’s usually friend and family, or people my subconscious invented, although once Lady Gaga featured in a zombie apocalypse. 

Terry Brooks is one of my favorite authors, along with Anne McCaffery, Tamora Pierce, and Naomi Novik. In fact, he’s definitely my favorite male writer.

I have been in love with fantasy stories as long as I can remember. In preschool I once tried to prove to some boys in my class that I was a magical sea witch like Ursula from “The Little Mermaid,” sans tentacles, and ended up in tears after getting my foot smashed.

Sue Dawe's Wishing Star

When I was five, my mom bought me a Sue Dawe painting of a unicorn (which not only still hangs on my wall and comes with me every time I move, but has been joined by other unicorn paintings). I would stare at that painting as I lay in bed unable to sleep. During daylight hours, I’d run alongside my unicorn through space and time, fighting villains with my rainbow army of unicorns and animals.

When I was eleven, I came down with the chicken pox and spend a week out of school. I read all of Terry Brooks’ Shannara book that were published at the time. “The Elf Queen of Shannara,” made me fall obsessively in love with elves. Then when I was twelve, Anne McCaffery caused me to fall hopelessly in love with dragons. 

Not only did I adore the dragons, but Lessa as well. She was strong, ruthless, and important, everything I wanted to be and didn’t feel I was as a lowly junior high schooler. I wrote my own versions of the dragon rider stories for nearly two years.

When I was fourteen, I stopped writing dragon rider stories and started writing stories of my own invention. My free time in high school was spent with my imaginary characters, rather than with friends at parties or dances. 

My writing went on the back burner after high school. Something else always took priority. School, work, my relationships, car problems... I still wrote from time to time, and still do, but not every weekend. Not all week long during spring or Christmas breaks. I found other passions, aerial and photography, and put a lot of time and energy into them. 

Cover art from "The Elf Queen of Shannara"

Sometimes I ache to write. I  yearn to submerse myself in one of the fantastical worlds I dreamed into being and stay there for days. I long for it like a lost lover longs to be in her beloved’s arms again.

I’m almost done with my bachelors degree. I’ve finished my major’s requirements, and all that’s left are the general bachelor requirements, the irritating QI’s that have nothing to do with my field of study.

There’s this pressure suffocating my thoughts as I try to figure out what I really want to do after I graduate. I don’t want to go onto grad school, at least not right now. Do I go to Vegas or Montreal and try to be a professional aerialist? That dream is enticing and seductive. In fact, that was my plan for nearly a year.

But lately I’ve had this thought. “When am I ever going to write?”

Then I dreamed about talking to Terry Brooks about publishing a novel. And since I’ve been wondering on my deathbed what I’d regret more; not doing aerial professionally or not writing professionally?

I think I’d regret not writing more.