Build Your Dreams: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love

Designed as a companion piece to Irvin and Hiden’s inspirational documentary film, The Dream Share Project, this refreshingly brief, exercise-focused guide is geared toward helping dreamers turn their creative aptitudes and fantasies into meaningful, sustainable work. The book is divided into chapters outlining how to identify core values, how to pursue them, and financial and practical concerns along the way. The visualization strategies, idea maps, and meditation exercises will be familiar to frequent readers of creativity-focused self-help titles, and some of the case studies are merely shopworn business book retreads. However, the book’s unflinching practicality is a rarity in the genre: the duo readily and duly acknowledges the necessity of powering through the less-exciting, early stages of achieving one’s goals, and they provide quite a bit of advice on how to deal with poor employment prospects, seemingly endless internships, and repeat rejection. The book is decidedly millennial in its outlook on the working world—every moment of giddy optimism is matched by a reminder of the inevitability of stumbling blocks and failure. But for dreamers hoping to keep their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground, this is a great starting point. Agent: Steve Harris and Michele Martin, CSG Literary Partners. (July)