Last night I wandered through the rows of shelves in the HBLL that contained juvenile fiction. I ran my hands along the spines of the books, occasionally pausing and smiling when I came across a particularly beloved book from my childhood. I went about the shelves, plucking off the books I sought as I came across them, gently cradling them in my arms as if they were children themselves rather than books intended for children.
The girl at the circulation desk couldn't help but smile as she scanned my books into the system. Children's literature does that to a person, I've found. "Are these for a class," she asked, "or just for fun?"
Both, I though. "For a class," I answered out loud.
"Which one?"
"Children's Literature," I replied.
She paused and continued to scan my books. "Are you an elementary education major?" she asked.
"No," I said. "I want to go into children's publishing, so I sweet talked my way into the class."
"That's amazing," she said, and I think she was referring more to my career aspirations and less to my ability to plead a convincing case to department secretaries.
A few months ago, when somebody asked me what I wanted to do after graduation, I'd simply shrug and say something about how I'd take any job that lets me edit. And technically that's still true—to a certain extent, at least.
After graduation I do want a job that allows me to edit. But more specifically, I want a job that allows me to edit in the world of children's literature. If the Hook-Handed Thug from Tangled asked me what my dream is, that's what I'd say.
And I think that deep down, that's always been my dream. It just hasn't been until recently that I've reconciled with it and owned it enough to be able to pull that dream out of my heart and my gut and form it into words that I say out loud. Admitting what my dream is—especially a dream that's so coveted in the world of editing—is frightening. Because if I don't admit to my dream, and it doesn't happen, nobody but myself will be any the wiser. I can let my perceived failure fester quietly in my heart without alerting anybody else to my incompetence.
But life is about having dreams, I think. And that's not to say that some—if not most—of those dreams won't fail, because they will. They'll crumble and fall apart and dissolve into a messy heap of What Could Have Been. But what's the point of living and trying and working if there isn't some dream motivating you to keep moving forward?
And so now I openly tell people about my perfect career. I gush and smile and talk too animatedly about my idealistic dreams of providing middle grade readers with books that convince them not to give up on reading. The people I share my dream with often ask if I'd really move to a big East Coast city to work at a publishing house.
"Bet your bottom dollar I would," I say. But then I tack on a statement about how it would be utterly terrifying and I'd probably freak out a lot at the beginning, but hey, when else in my life will I be able to just up and move to New York or Baltimore or Chicago or Boston?
On Tuesday in my children's literature class, we discussed the logistics of picture books. The professor taught about verso and recto pages and explained why books must be published in certain increments of page numbers and all sorts of nitty-gritty publishing quirks. After each factoid he'd pause and say, "But you don't need to know this unless you're playing Picture Book Trivial Pursuit."
I smiled to myself every time and thought, I need to know this. Because my dream is children's publishing. And in the publishing world you need to know about verso and recto pages and why books must be published in certain increments of page numbers and all sorts of nitty-gritty publishing quirks.
When we turned to our groups to analyze some picture books, one of the girls in my group caught my attention. "You're the one who's going into publishing, right?"
"Yeah," I confirmed. And then I was bombarded with questions about the nitty-gritty publishing quirks, and I smiled as I realized that I'd somehow become the authority when it comes to title pages and dust jackets and the like.
Another member of the group piped in, "Is that why you've been writing down all the publishing companies from the books we've looked at today?"
"Yeah," I confirmed once more. "I'm making a list of all the publishing houses I can so that I can search for jobs."
The guest lecturer in my children's publishing class last night was none other than Brandon Mull. In addition to being a wildly talented author—here's where I admit that I've actually never cracked open a single of his multiple best-sellers, but that I know many people whose taste in books I trust who have and that I am committed to repenting and reading his work—he is one of the most genuinely funny, down to earth, unpretentious people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
What struck me most about Brandon (aside from the aforementioned qualities, that is) was his contagious passion for his job. The life of a full-time author isn't as glamorous as we tend to make it out to be, but he loves every minute of it. I sat riveted as he spoke, his passion and enthusiasm for books and publishing and reading seeping into my very soul until I felt quite certain that I could make my dreams happen just like he did. Some people are just like that, I guess. They can lift people up and make them believe in themselves without even knowing their name.
Brandon Mull is one of the lucky ones whose dreams fell into place after years of hard work and lots of networking. Chances are, I won't be as lucky as he was. Chances are that I don't have the necessary amount of talent in my chosen field to see the kind of success he has, and chances are I'll end up just taking any job that allows me to edit.
But I won't know until I try.
So I'm going to try.
And if I try and fail, I'll try again. And if I fail again, maybe I'll keep trying or maybe I'll form a new dream. And at the end of the day, if the only children's books I ever read are the ones stamped with the name of an author I've never worked with and published by a publishing house I've never worked for that I read to my warm, squirmy, sleepy children at bedtime, I'll be content.
Because I tried. And because reading bedtime stories to warm, squirmy, sleepy children is a part of a bigger, more important dream I have. And even if my publishing dream didn't come true, if I'm reading those books to a footie pajama clad toddler, one dream did come true. And that would be enough.
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