Calling All Daydreamers

The universe in your head is almost always a better place than the world we actually live in. Explaining that universe to others, however, is just not as simple as it sounds. Something is lost when that thought goes from your head into your mouth or on to your computer. Sometimes, it’s easier to just slip into that other reality and lock everyone else out. But what if you could learn to bring others into that world? Your universe might not impress everyone, but it could be a place called home by like-minded souls across continents and generations.

Brandon Mull is a daydreamer. You might have heard it from him in one of his workshops, or maybe sensed it in his books. It was definitely evident in The Beacon’s interview with him. As a high schooler, he also struggled with sharing the worlds in his head; in fact, writing didn’t become his day job until he was 30. “What I was doing in high school wasn’t good enough yet, but I felt like I could keep getting better, and I did.” So how did he manage to do it?

Instead of writing for a living, Brandon Mull took on a marketing day job after college and continued writing only as a hobby. In those years, there was no push for him to produce anything amazing. No emails from publishers, no calls from agents, no letters from fans. For Brandon Mull, writing as a hobby in that period of time was completely for himself and his dreams of supporting his family with his writing. “I had a lot of the faith in the stories in my mind,” he said, and just needed the text to match the stories. The persistence of his writing paid off. The more he wrote, the easier he found it to pinpoint “his voice” in his writing, and the more his writing resembled the magic in his head.

Near the end of our interview, Brandon Mull gave us three messages for aspiring authors at AISG:

1. “It can be done…it’s hard but do-able.” You can succeed and make something out of your daydreams if you persist.

2. “You should not give yourself pressure to achieve it overnight…Give yourself space to succeed at it.”

3. “Follow your passion. Write about what you think is cool…What gives you the best chance to succeed is [to] write about something that really works for you, that you are really passionate about and really in to. Don’t pretend. Don’t write what you think someone else wants to see. Write what you want to see.”

So, pick up that pen or open up your laptop, and tell the world about your universe.