It’s hard to believe that 30 years have passed since I held a copy of my first book in my hands, staring at the name WISHCRAFT on the cover and, right under it, my name. My life didn’t change, not at first. I was still a hard-working single parent of two boys, as I had been for over ten years, and I was still scraping by financially, to say nothing of the fact that I was almost 45 years old at the time, which in 1979 was considered a bit old for anyone, especially a woman, to be starting anything.
But on that day, as far as I was concerned, I was Cinderella at the ball because I had become a published writer. It was like a dream. I’d always had a secret fear that I would just pass through this life and no one would ever know I’d been here. Now everything was okay. It was on the record. I wrote a book, and I knew it was a good one because it was based on a painstakingly designed, 2-day workshop I’d been running for almost three years. I knew how much my workshop helped people. I watched them use my techniques to help each other turn impossible dreams into realities right in front of my eyes – setting up small businesses, finding ways to perform their plays in New York theaters, getting grants to travel the Appalachians taking photos of children, getting into (and through) good law schools, finding reliable help for adopting children — dreams as unique as the people who dreamed them.
I hoped WISHCRAFT would help people just as much as my workshops helped them, but I wasn’t sure if that was possible. I had recorded every one of the workshops (and at 12 hours each, that was a lot of audiocassettes) because I knew they were well worth saving, and I used those same words in the book. But people worked face to face in the workshops and I was worried that a book wouldn’t have the same impact.
I didn’t have to worry for long.
A few weeks after WISHCRAFT was published, letters started coming into my mailbox, handwritten letters in hand-addressed and stamped envelopes, a few every week at first, and then more and more until, after six months, I had cardboard boxes filled with letters piled high in my closet. Readers wrote to thank me for being so practical and down-to-earth, for understanding the reality of their lives, and for helping them pinpoint their dreams. They appreciated the fact that I told them to expect fear and negativity and they loved the complaining sessions I advised.
Some people sensed the workshop origins of WISHCRAFT and turned it into a reading group selection, spending up to a year going through the pages together and achieving all their dreams. Others told me WISHCRAFT was the text in one of their college courses and others asked for training to lead special ‘Success Teams,’ using WISHCRAFT as the guide.
Most people read the book on their own, but wrote that they no longer felt alone. Their letters invited me into their lives and they wanted me to know that they finally felt seen and understood and helped by WISHCRAFT and that certain passages were the key to getting them into action and taking steps toward their dreams. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before.
Thirty years have now passed and I’m still getting thank you letters, some from first-time readers, some from people who re-read WISHCRAFT after many years and want me to know that it has helped them again and again. I’m even hearing from their grown children.
I’ve been able to keep only a handful of the letters the post office brought me in the first 20 years. I’ve saved a few more of the emails that started coming 10 years ago, and continue to arrive almost every day. But no matter how many I receive, I’m still thrilled and honored to read them, and I personally answer as many as I can.
In publishing terms, WISHCRAFT is a success. It has never been out of print since that first hardcover copy I held in my hands in 1979. Publishers were happy to look at my later manuscripts and published five more of my books, which have also done well.
Because of WISHCRAFT I became a ‘somebody’. Freelance writers call to quote me in their magazine articles. I’m invited to speak in front of hundreds of audiences, from Fortune 100 companies and international outplacement firms, to parents at “unschooling” conferences, and classrooms of gifted children in rural schools. I’ve spoken in the US, Canada, Australia and Western Europe, Israel and even in countries that had just stepped out from behind the Iron Curtain and wanted to learn how to dream again.
At this writing I’ve done five public television pledge specials and plans are in the works for more. Occasionally, people even recognize me in airports, which surprises me because I’m usually flying in from overseas, tired, tousled and carrying a dog. I don’t look like a celebrity, and, happily, they never treat me like one. They talk to me as if we’ve known each other a long time. That is exactly what I would have wished for.
Because in personal terms, WISHCRAFT is a success greater than any I could ever have imagined. I’ve actually been given the rare opportunity to help people go after their dreams by offering them a non-mysterious, nuts-and-bolts way of reaching their goals -- even if they think they don’t know what their goals are, don’t believe in themselves and can’t sustain a permanent positive attitude. In fact, I want to give them a rarely-stated dose of happy reality: You don’t need to change yourself to change your life.
So I try to make everyone laugh at their negativity and realize that have everything they need inside them to create the life they want, and to see that the reason they haven’t achieved their dreams so far is because humans can’t sustain positive thinking, they need structure, accountability and support. Isolation and a lack of structure can create disorientation and fear. That’s why I repeat, over and over, ‘Isolation is the dream killer, not your lousy attitude.”
By now that message, first stated in WISHCRAFT, has rung a bell with millions of people. Because of their responses I’ve been able to earn my living for decades doing the work I love best. Like everyone else, I’ve been high and I’ve been low, but I’ve never been bored. Not for a moment. That has made the last thirty years fly by.
And it all started with WISHCRAFT. I hope my first book will give you the same engaging, meaningful life it has given me. Even more, I hope it will inspire you to help others go after their dreams, too. That would make me happiest of all.
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