Mango trench
Sezane cardigan
Sezane jeans
Jimmy Choo heels
Chanel handbag
RayBan sunglasses
Agape Studio necklace (c/o) (similar)
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Chanel earrings
Location: Winnipeg Art Gallery – Winnipeg, Manitoba
I still remember the first time someone called me a dreamer. The summer after eleventh grade, I went on a student exchange, spending almost two months in a small city in Quebec called Riviere-du-Loup. When we – there were three of us who were billeted in one house, with a young-ish couple – were leaving, our hosts gave us all very kind, heartfelt notes about how they’d seen us grow in our time with them. Tu es belle, reveuse… mine started.
A dreamer. I’d never thought of myself that way – I’m creative, certainly, but also pretty firmly grounded in reality. It was the connotation of the word dreamer that took me aback, I think. The word is used to describe people who stare out windows; people who have plans but take no action. I’m a box ticker. I love to-do lists, revel in the sense of accomplishment that comes from getting things done. And yet, when I reflected, I could understand why someone might call me a dreamer. I might be a realist, but if reality doesn’t suit me, I refuse to settle for it. There’s so much more to life than just here and now. If I didn’t always know that, I learned it early on from books. And I wanted, still want, as much more of life as I can have…
…which, I suppose, does require a bit of imagination – a willingness to dream, if you will.
My big dream, that summer after eleventh grade, was to become a novelist. I loved books so deeply that I wanted to write my own, so I’d done exactly that – just before I left for Quebec, I submitted a manuscript to the Scholastic National Art and Writing Awards for consideration. It was about halfway through the next year that I learned, to my complete surprise, that I’d won second prize. That award turned out to be the highlight of my writing career for more than a decade. It’s one thing to be a dreamer, but turning those dreams into reality isn’t a straightforward process. When I went to university to study writing, I fell out of love with it for a while – studying it made it feel like work, which I wasn’t keen on. So I tried new things, started a career I’d never anticipated I might consider and travelled.
A lot.
I confess: I didn’t just fall out of love with writing because studying what I loved turned it into work. The realities of what a writing career would look like – the hardship, the limited likelihood of recognition (or book sales, even if recognition came), the need to always have several fallback plans to make ends meet – made me nervous. So did (what felt like) the very real possibility that even if I dedicated my whole life to writing, I might never be good enough. And if I were good enough, people still might not want to read anything I’d written.
Score one for creative insecurity. I might be a dreamer, but when it comes to considering that I might be successful, there have been long periods of my life where I’ve shown a serious lack of imagination – and confidence. Self-doubt is pretty normal. And so, frankly, is struggling to push through it. Still, it’s such a tedious, tiresome process. What I wouldn’t get to have even one of the hours, never mind the days and years, I wasted on it back. (Sadly, some dreams truly are impossible, and that’s one of them.)
I came back to writing, of course. I had to. When you love something, it’s hard to fathom a life without it, and my life without arranging words on paper was unquestionably incomplete. The dream of being a novelist was still there, and a particular story kept tugging at me. It took years, but ultimately, I published After the Shots in 2014. And then Before the World Opened in 2018. Today, a little bit later than planned, the final instalment in what became an accidental trilogy, We Were Always Outlaws, is officially available on Amazon.
For a dreamer who doesn’t really think of herself as one, publishing a third book is so much more than just achieving a long held aspiration; it’s the culmination of close to a lifetime of work. And it’s proof that its worth doing what scares you. While everything you want may not be on the other side of fear, you’ll never know what’s there unless you can make it to the other side.
There is so much more to come about this book launch but today, on day one, I am, quite simply, thrilled to be able to say that I’ve made this a reality.
