Author Guest Post: Brayden Hirsch

AUTHOR BIO
Brayden Hirsch is a teenage writer from Vancouver, British Columbia. His first book, Shadow Catalyst, is a collection of short thrillers releasing from Steward House Publishers in September, 2011. For more information, follow Brayden on Twitter or Facebook, or at www.braydenhirsch.com.

DREAMING YOURSELF TO SLEEP
As a writer, I’ve always hated it when others claim that this story “came to them in a dream.” To tell you the truth, I never actually believe them. Either they’re lying, I think, or they’re just never going to get published. Real writing doesn’t just walk out of a dream—real writing happens when writers walk into dreams.
For all the readers out there, it’s really quite hard for me to explain writing. For centuries, writers have been explaining it using quirky little phrases that sound nice but in reality, hold no real meaning, making the entertainment world seem like some unattainable fantasy. If you ask me what writing is, I’ll give you two words.
Hard work.
Good stories don’t come from dreams, they come when you shackle yourself to the desk and don’t let yourself up until you have Chapter One. Then Chapter Two. Pretty soon you kick the chains under the desk for a while, because you’ve got a whole book—but don’t get me wrong. They don’t stay under the desk for long, because pretty soon book two is calling your name.
And the more I live, the more I learn, the more I realize how true this is in most aspects of life. Especially teenage life.
Maybe you’re an aspiring singer. Your vocal teacher says you’ve got potential, so do your family and friends. But unless you get out there and start doing something about that talent, you’ve got nothing. Maybe you can’t write, or sing. Maybe you’re just a good student, maybe you can think about things in ways no one else has before, maybe you’ve got a fresh outlook on life. But you don’t do anything about it.
Why? Are you scared of those two little words? Hard work can be tough, sure—I mean, learning to write is hard. It took me years, and I’m still learning. Rejection is hard. Watching your editor tear apart everything you thought you’ve achieved and then trying to piece it all together again—it’s not only tough, it’s heartbreaking. I’m not trying to paint a pretty picture.
It’s not going to be fun. And yet, at the same time, the finished product may just be the best thing you ever do with your life.
What scares me much more than the prospect of working hard, however, is not working at all. What terrifies me is the sea of human souls that drift through life without ever helping out their fellow citizens or saying anything remarkable. What scares me is not changing lives—but if I can impact just one, just change the life of a single person, then it all pays off.
That’s my dream.
So when people ask me if I find my stories in dreams, I say no. I tell them that I search for them while I’m wide awake. I work hard for them. I break my heart for them. And at the end of the day, when shadows paint over the world and silence settles over all of us, I climb under the covers, close my eyes and thank the Lord, and I dream.
I dream myself to sleep.

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