Dreams Can Come True

Dreams May Come True

Damn, sometime yesterday, I must have misplaced a very important publisher letter. I have no idea now of where I put it. You would think that the good news that the letter contained would make me careful about what I did with it. But no, the forgetfulness of being in my mid-70s seems to have overruled the significance of what I now cannot find. I feel sometimes that it would be better if I had a young agent to do my remembering for me. ‘What do I have to remember for you today, Ralph?’ ‘Yes, is there a birthday of a family member or close friend, that I have forgotten?’

I do somehow remember that the letter was from a publisher who wanted to take on my most recent work. I would have called them and apologized for my stupidity in misplacing their mail. However, the power of my ever-growing forgetfulness eliminated the name of the publisher from my conscious mind. Publishers that reject my book proposals, I would love to forget, but they stay in my head forever. I do not buy books from them. I even avoid their books in libraries.

One thing that really bothers me about this particular act of clumsy foolishness is that I do not get to read over and over again the acceptance of my most recent book proposal. That is the type of message that I cannot see before me nearly enough times. There have been so many rejections in the past few years. I never erase any of them accidentally from my mind. I rid myself of their message only with deliberate active anger, tearing up the paper on which the dismissal was written. That is something that I enjoy doing for the short term petty sense of victory that it gives to me. ‘You may have rejected my work, but I have torn up your letter and will not buy books from you in the future. You have no taste’.

A short time later, when I picked up my mail. I saw that I had just received what appears to be a somewhat accepting e-mail from another publisher. While that is a good thing, I cannot compare the two to see which one might be the better offer. I want the best response that I can get. The publisher I know the name of was not tremendously encouraging. They just told me that they were “considering” my book. I’ve read that word “considering” a few times before, only to be turned down eventually a short time later. They raise my hopes, only later making my happiness crash from a higher height than what I get from a publisher that rejected my work right away. I mean that it can be possible that considering may step up to publication, but not likely in my history of this game that such an initial message would lead to success. I give no written reply to their second response when the “considering” has led to failure.

All the publishers I submitted my work to were based in my hometown city. So I tried looking on-line for all of them in my ancient telephone book so I could remember the name of the one that had accepted my work. But no publisher name I looked at seemed to be the one with the offer. I am still skunked.

The Second Dream

Deep in a midnight slumber, George sees himself walking down a street not a great distance away from his home. Then he sees what his dream self wanted him to see. There was the bookstore that doubled as a publisher. He had gone there a few months past, when he was just beginning to write his book. He had talked to the owner/boss, and told him about the book that he was working on. The man smiled at him saying that it sounded quite publishable. George swore to himself that he would submit a proposal to the company once the book was completed. He had somehow forgotten about this experience, until now. It took two dreams to bring the experience back to his mind. It must have been deep in his memory.

He soon woke up shortly after the second dream late at night, conscious now of what the two identical dreams had been telling him what he should do. He wrote down what he had just learned, on a piece of paper that he quickly taped on the door of his bedroom so he would not forget again. The next morning he woke up and stood up quickly, soon to read the message that he had written in the night now moved into morning. It felt at first like he had never seen the name before, but complete remembrance soon filled his conscious mind.. Then he dressed in a hurry, put his manuscript in a bag, then walked rather rapidly down the street to the store he had visited once before. He handed a copy of his manuscript to the boss of the place, and gave him his phone number. The boss said that he would definitely consider it. There was that nasty word again!

The very next day, early in the afternoon, he received a phone call telling him that they wanted to publish his book. They really liked the full copy of the one that had attracted their attention months before when he had told the publisher about what he wanted to write about. It was all about how dreams gave the hero clues and confidence as to what he should do concerning a woman to which he had recently been attracted.

George learned that day that dreams can come true if you listen to them, remembering what they say, and not blindly awakening to ignorance and frustration. He felt that it was too bad that there wasn’t a device with which people could somehow record their dreams. On second thought he remembered that there were nightmares as well, dreams that he wouldn’t want to know about when awake. Dream imagination can darken a day, particularly if you took it too seriously. Still, he decided that he would put pen and paper on the desk beside his bed from now on. You never know when that would work in your favour. It would be better to remember when it came to the writing of books. He felt empty when he wasn’t working on a book.