Engines
As part of a longer article I read today, this phrase stood out (I know, it's from LL Cool J, but it still works): a dream isn't a target, it's an engine.I know that's hokey, but it doesn't make it untrue.
When I was younger, I was all about targets. I was lazy, but I managed to achieve quite a bit. It was never anything close to what I could have achieved, though, if I'd worked harder. My achievements weren't part of a process. They were just flags I could run up the pole to admire.
Eli 23.3 being born is what eventually turned me into an engine.
I thought about this in relation to my writing. I'm rewriting the entire first section of the book, about 70 pages, and it's a giant pain in the ass. Every morning it's brutal. I know I'll never have commercial success as an author. There's no target I can hit. I could just stop. I can't stop, though. It's inconceivable. Writing is an engine, not a target, and it's just what I do.
Eli is that way, too. No matter what he achieves, he never has a stopping point. He barely even slows down. The engine is always running, and I respect that enormously.
Maybe he's an engine for me, too.
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