Birds, Words, & Inspiration

What Do You Do When Life Gives You Horses?

  Last night, my mom told me a story about horses. I already knew it and you probably know it too, but it is one of my favorite human/animal stories. So, I listened.

The horse had been long extinct in North America when De Soto and Coronado arrived from Spain in the 1500s. So, when the Spanish explorers brought the fleet and malleable equine with them, they returned an old friend. The only domesticated animals the Native Americans had were dogs at this point and the horse opened up the range of possibilities.

The return of the horse was a gift that changed a world. It made it possible to cover larger hunting territory, transport heavy loads with greater ease, and gave the tribes that embraced them more stability and more time to do with as they pleased. This meant more art and it meant more war. The horse changed on old culture at an unprecedented speed in amazing and at times violent ways.

I can't help but think we've been given a few kinds of horses in the last few decades. The world has changed in ways that are dizzying with their possibilities and dangers. And I think a lot of us are scared, but you can't give back horses.

The larger metaphor is obvious, but as my mom and I broke down the correlations, I realized that it was an especially poignant analogy for a project I've been struggling with for months.

I have been writing a novel for seven years, a novel that's been done for three years and on its ninth major edit. It's likely not the best book I've written, but it means a great deal to me and I can't seem to put it in a drawer and give it a quiet resting place.

Traditional publishing is a fickle business that rather fairly only takes low-risk bets. I don't write books that everyone will love. I sometimes want to, but when I'm being true to myself, I write things that likely aren't going to be for a mass audience. (There's only 132 of you on this mailing list, by the way.) What this means is that despite upwards of 50 rejections, no one wants this book.

But publishing has horses now.

I can publish it myself on Amazon and other platforms. The range is wide open. It looks like no one will champion it however. Therefore, I am left with depending on having complete and utter faith in myself that this novel (which is supposed to be one of three) isn't a complete and total wreck. There is no guide. There is no reassurance.

A sudden opening of new territory has endless possibilities, but galloping into the unknown also has unexpected dangers. The world of self-publishing is crammed with horrible books written by authors unwilling to do the work, pay for editors and cover artists, and looking for a quick buck. These writers have given people who ride horses a bad name. And they've taught readers to be a lot more critical of anyone who comes riding in on a horse.

My mom and I discussed this and I finally found myself admitting how scared I am to finish the last edit of this novel, because then I have to meet my self-publication deadline. I have to accept that I'm about to brave a new world on a horse I've never ridden. I have to believe I can be that brave. I have to convince myself that the consequences are worth the fact that I'm going to have to fall off this horse in order to learn how to ride it.



I had a dream when I was in my 30s about cranes and horses. I was sitting on a bluff above the ocean, watching the sunset on the surf. There was an old man sitting beside me telling me a story. In the strange rules that dreams sometimes make, I knew I wasn't allowed to look at him, so I kept my eyes on the sea and just listened.

As I watched, two horses flanked by two cranes ran down the beach, and the old man told me that it was the horse that taught the crane to fly. He told me that it was about commitment and a belief in your own momentum. He explained that crane, with its long legs and deep connection to the earth, felt no need to fly, until the horse showed it what speed and freedom looked like.

I watched as the horses hit full gallop while the cranes, struggling to keep up, started flapping their wings. Then the animals turned into the waves, the horses rising to skim the water's surface and the cranes lifting into the air as the four disappeared into the sunset.

"And that my dear," the old man said. "Is how one learns to fly."

Convinced that this was a real story, one I had surely read somewhere, I've looked for it for years, but I've never found it. And honestly, I have never been quite certain what my subconscious was trying to tell me.

I just hold a dear and vivid image of two chestnut stallions flanked by pale and red-headed cranes, disappearing with wild abandon into an orange glow of unexpected possibility.

Which leaves me with the question... What do you do when life gives you horses? And the answer is so obvious that it already seems cliché. What you do is ride.

xxR