At some point over the last few years, without realizing it, my literary ambitions have evolved. Since I began writing with the aim of a career as a writer, my goal has always been traditional publishing. Despite knowing that the odds are slimmer than those of being struck by lightning during a shark attack while winning the lottery, I’ve always secretly dreamed that I could somehow be the next J. K. Rowling (without the transphobia). That I could “make it big,” whatever exactly that means. That I could make a living as a writer. Quit my day job.

That’s still the dream. But the aspiration has shifted. My plan was to get snapped up by a literary agent, who would become my bff and sell my multi-book YA fantasy series at auction, at which point I would be A Big Freaking Deal and my husband could become a kept man with nothing to interrupt his hobbying aside from the occasional carting of a child to the odd medical appointment.

It’s silly, I know. I’ve always known it. But when do big dreams not sound silly? I imagine all the things that would never have happened if people had never entertained silly ideas. “Hey, dude. We could fly.” “See the moon up there? What if….” “Imagine people didn’t necessarily die horrible deaths from common childhood illnesses…”

If anything, my ambitions have become larger, not smaller. But they’ve morphed. The publishing industry is changing rapidly. I have lost count of the amount of articles, posts, tweets I’ve read in which traditionally published writers and others in the industry discuss how much sheer luck is involved in the process, how arbitrary it can be. And a barrage of scandals have revealed how toxic it can be, too.

A couple of days ago, one of my critique partners shared a description of a writer’s workshop that laid out six must-dos for writers. As I read through them, what struck me was their prescriptiveness. No “quiet” stories. Pacing has to move, move, MOVE. Do this. Don’t do that. And the end of all this, while it may still result in a variety of stories, is a circumscribing of the extent of that variety. Where is the space for creative risk? Where is the room for growth as a writer–for setting impossible goals and then achieving them?

Over the past several years, and the past several books, I’ve learned this about myself–what I want to do as a writer is grow, change. With each new project, I imagine something I don’t think I’m capable of doing, and then I figure out how to do it. This is exciting for me. This is what gets me fired up. I don’t want to write for a market. I acknowledge that this is likely the kiss of death for a traditional writing career.

I don’t want to write the way I’m supposed to. I don’t want to write where the money is. I don’t want to write masterpieces of pacing at the expense of meaning, language, truth.

I want to write stories that crack the world open, that break it into pieces and then put it back together again.

The thought of never being trad-pubbed used to horrify me. It used to send me into existential fits of dread that sucked me into their dark undertow for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. I lost more of my life to this than I’m comfortable admitting.

I’m not sure what in me has changed. I still feel ambitious–perhaps more so than ever. But I no longer need to be trad-pubbed in the way I have for most of my adult life. I have started to learn to be okay with the likelihood that my stories may never find their readers–not because I don’t want them to, but because whether they do or not is not really up to me, not really in my control. All I can do is write, and try. I will continue to query agents, but maybe expand out to indie presses, to the publishers who are still interested in risks, in experimentation. My odds there are probably exponentially lower.

It’s hard to put this plainly enough–I hope I’m making sense. But then, this space has often served as my proving-ground for ideas, as the place to learn and recognize my own thoughts. Simply put, I am suddenly no longer consumed by a soul-crushing need to be traditionally published. I would still love to be. But I no longer need it to feel that my stories have worth, that they matter–that I have worth, that I matter. It feels very liberating to have finally broken free of this. It feels exciting and huge. I think of all the things that constrain me–what if they didn’t? Many of the constraints I can’t change (no wings; limited by gravity; being human in the world is a constant reality)–but I can ditch this one. What will I write now that I am free of it?

What won’t I write?

My wish for you, dear person reading this, is that this year you will ditch at least one of your demons, preferably the biggest, nastiest one of the lot–that what limits you will fall away–that you will soar like the beautiful, mighty descendant of impossibly flying humans that you are.