NaNoWriMo 2017 Day 1

 

$33.33 (including shipping).

That’s all I paid to buy back my dream.

I thought it would have been a lot more expensive.  I was surprised.

What did I buy for $33.33 (including shipping), you ask?  A Smith Corona XL Electric typewriter.  State of the art for 1993.  Why would you want a computer?  I realize the irony of this statement as I am typing on a MacBook in the middle of a Starbucks.

That was my dream.  Not the typewriter, no, not at all.  Writing.  It was always writing.  I wanted to be a writer, as long as I can remember.  I used to fantasize about putting words on paper and influencing the mind of those who might read it.

I didn’t just dream about it, I pursued it.  I remember in 3rd grade, I saved up some birthday money and I bought a used typewriter at a church flea market.  Much to my chagrin, some of the keys didn’t work.  I felt so duped!  I imagine the blue-haired, Thelma Harper look-alike that sold it to me knew it too!  Curse you, apathetic bingo-player!  You crushed a 3rd grader’s dream!

Fortunately, my mom knew about my dream, too.  That’s why she bought me a brand new Smith Corona electric typewriter for Christmas of 1993.  Skip you, evil church flea market lady!

I remember opening it and welling up with tears.  I didn’t cry because she bought me the typewriter, but because I knew my mom saved a lot of money (that we didn’t have) to fund my vision.

This was the spark!  I wrote and wrote.  Every day.  I wrote poems, little stories, things I learned in school.  I always had the typewriter out.  I loved the familiar churn of its motor when I would turn it on.  I absolutely loved how it smelled.  I would sometimes just smell it (when no one was around, obviously).

When I got to the 5th/6th grade, I started using it less and less.  I started having questions asked of me by people who lived longer than I had.  Questions like, “Sammy, that’s cute, but what are you gonna do for a real job?”  Or, “Wow, do you even know HOW to write a book?”  Or, “Sammy, why do you keep smelling the typewriter?”

As these questions were thrown at me, I didn’t quite know how to respond.  So I didn’t.  I suppose I took out my confusion on my Smith Corona, by letting dust collect on it in the bottom of my closet and giving up on writing all together before I graduated high school.  After all, the opposite of love isn’t hatred, but apathy.

Has that happened to you?  Did you have a passion that was derailed mid-course?  Did you have an idea that was so big it scared you during your daydreams, and that fear compelled you to stuff it away?  Did you find yourself envisioning yourself having been a part of something so life-changing that it caused your pulse to race?  But somehow, it slowly faded into the background of “ordinary.”

Solomon recounts of a dark time in Israel’s history, where God’s voice grew fainter and fainter in their ears.  This oft-quoted passage still rings true.

Proverbs 29:18 (ESV) — “Where there is no prophetic vision the people cast off restraint…”

That’s what happened to you.  That vision that God gave you, grew more and more unclear as you stifled the desire to entertain it.  Please understand that the vision only gets clearer when you walk towards it, not when you keep your distance.  I want to challenge you to search deep inward and Heaven-ward until you find that vision again, because you lost it along the way.

NaNoWriMo gives writes the opportunity to do that.  It’s Day 1 – start dreaming again.  Dust it off and write those 1,667 words.