Fuel for Dreams

As writers and editors, we have a lot of dreams about what could happen in the days ahead. Maybe it’s for your writing and how many people it will touch. Or maybe it’s the impact of the printed page in your own life.  However you define that intangible quality, something fuels your dreams and motivates you to get up every day and work on your writing. 

We regularly go to different movies and often on the weekend. Yesterday we caught Dreamer, which is inspired from a true story.  The film is a family movie about a washed up horse trainer who takes his daughter to work one day.  During a race, a horse has a tragic accident and breaks a bone. Normally the life of the horse would be over but the trainer decides to keep the horse and quits his job. Along with his daughter, the horse trainer nurses this horse called Sonador (or Dreamer in Spanish) back to full strength.  The horse not only walks but races again.

The acting and storytelling and dialogue in this film was remarkable. I was captured in the plot and the beautiful scenery. More than anything, the story provided fuel for dreams.  Not in words—but in actions, the story showed how hard the characters worked to make their dreams come true. Cale Crane (Dakota Fanning’s character) was repeatedly shown climbing out of bed at an early hour, making coffee and heading to the race track. Inherent but never verbalized in these scenes was the amount of time and sacrifice that it took for the Crane family to see their dreams become reality.

For me, the film was magical and something that I could watch at least once a month for inspiration. I highly recommend it—and it’s rare that I can recommend such a film without qualifications—yet I can do so with this film, Dreamer.

Each of us have dreams for our writing.  Whether you are writing a magazine article or a children’s book or a novel or a nonfiction book, the dream is the same—to reach people and have it succeed. Too often people are carrying these dreams without the willingness to do the work necessary to achieve it. It’s the hours of time spent learning the craft of writing or the hours of training which others rarely see—yet is critical to the process. And if you are looking for a bit of fuel for your dreams, then catch Dreamer.