WHEN TO STOP WRITING AND DO SOMETHING ELSE IN LIFE
I am trying to wrap my mind around the almost hysterical, obsessive need for people to become a published author. Mostly, I suspect, it is like one of those twist off caps on a cheap bottle of wine where the threads don’t quite catch right. There is a concentrated effort to get the cap off. More simply, getting into the publishing racket is another example of our need for acceptance in the crowd of strangers. We live in age where many people wish to stand out apart from the crowd as an accomplished worthy, special word genius. The problem is the number of people who want to stand out by writing books has become larger than the crowd that read and buy books.
Like most people I admired perseverance as a noble attribute. People who don’t easily give and roll over with the first wall in life they hit. People who pick themselves up and keep on going. That’s my kind of people. Pull up a chair, I raise a glass of OJ to your grit.
But there is a limit. I think I may have found where that fence is. There is a writer who blogs at Literary Rejection Display and he’s blogged about his 11,000 rejections on the way to getting 82 stories published. One publishing industry insider called this record of rejection “inspirational.”
Remember we are talking about rejection. That haunting word that has shadowed every kid from 11 years on. Who in defeat, looks back at the bully and says, “Yeah, I’ll show you.”
Let’s test this theory of what is inspirational inside the world of rejection. Forget about writing stories for a moment. Let’s say the person wishes more than anything to be a world-class marksman and reap the honor of that status with the larger world. He goes to the shooting range. Pulls out his rifle and goes through 11,000 rounds of ammo. He hits the target 82 times. Not a candidate for sniper’s school. But he doesn’t give up. He slaps in another clip and blasts away.
Or assume he’s a trainee pilot and manages to crash land a plane (let’s make that a different plane) 11,000 times but has 82 confirmed landings where the plane safely landed. The air force would likely not give him a set of wings. United Airlines might hire him. But do you seriously want him flying the plane you are in?
Or assume he builds custom cars on spec. His brochure says he personally built spec cars, which were rejected by 11,000 buyers but 82 cars he managed to sell. Do you want to buy or ride in one of his cars?
Or he bakes cakes which are rejected by the 11,000 cake tasters, who spit them out, drink water to wash away the bad taste and ultimately shopped for cakes elsewhere. Still 82 other cake buyers are bought one of his cakes, saying they were yummy. Would you eat the cake?
Would we find the marksman, trainee pilot, car builder and cake maker inspirational in light of their rejections? Or would we wonder how a person can take that kind of beating, wake up the next morning and knowing he had a .007 percent chance of success but still manages to pull out the rifle, get into the cockpit of the plane, go to the garage and assemble another spec car, or to kitchen to bake a cake, firing up the process of almost near certain rejection all over again?
It seems writing stories and books is a special areas of human activity that attracts so many people who willingly continue to persist despite the clear message that rejection delivers: you should devote your talents and energies to something with at least lottery type odds of success. I don’t have the answer to the question of why the continued effort to write when such a clear signal of rejection of a writer’s work indicates that he shouldn’t bother is inspirational? Other than one: It is difficult to let go of a dream. Especially if you believe that in time, with enough effort, the dream can come true.
The harsh reality is that not everyone can play the violin, swim, run, shoot, cook, sing, dance or tell jokes at a professional level. There is a certain level that defines success. It is where a commercial enterprise that depends on turning a profit will pay money in order to support the talent. A big talent brings in a lot of money. Sponsors will pay money to be associated with the skill and talent. Perhaps in sports it is easier to know who has won and who has lost. It is objective. There are cameras at the finish line. Sensors at the end of the pool pick up the first touch. There is no arguing the toss. No bellyaching that a winner is made a loser because the gatekeepers don’t recognize talent. Losing 11,000 times isn’t professional talent. It is by definition not professional. The pitcher who throws 82 strikes is a hero, and can play for the Yankees. But if he throws 11,000 balls into the dirt in order to get 82 strikes, no one is going to write an inspirational movie about that player’s devotion to the game and how the Yankees were damn fools to overlook him.
In writing, the general feeling is that, well, it is all feeling, subjective, and if you tunnel away long enough, you can burrow under the gatekeepers wall and moat, breach the inner walls, and do a victory dance, holding up the published story or book, showing the world you are a winner after all.
No one likes rejection. The reality of the world is that truly talented people with unique abilities and rare talents and skills are a small percentage of the total population. The rest of us admire such people. We watch them perform. We benefit from such performances in many different ways. The problem emerges when we delude ourselves into telling ourselves, “Hey, I can write cozy novels just like Cakes Copeland.” Or “I can tell jokes better than David Letterman.” Or “I can write a novel better than Dan Brown.”
I know. The first and last example is what gives all that false hope. No one truly believes the network should dump Letterman and hire him as the replacement. Being funny is more than just hard work. Like writing a story or book.
I don’t know what the magic number is before a writer should move on. But I’d say it isn’t the 11,000 elevation, the K2 of rejection. A heavy weight boxer that takes 11,000 body punches while throwing 82 deserves a place in Guinness Book of World Records for continuing to stand in the ring. But inspiration isn’t the word that comes to mind when you look at the boxer who has taken that beating. Sadness is closer to the mark, a sadness that comes from understanding that we occupy a world where no one has the balls to tell the boxer that the fight is over. We tell him that because he’s still standing on his feet after such punishment that he is inspirational. Instead we should be telling him throw in the towel, take a shower, go home, devote what precious time he has left on this earth for and with family, friends, and community. Inside that place, he is more likely to make a difference, have more impact and a life with more meaning. There are things in life other than writing stories, books and films from which self-worth and accomplishment can be achieved. And just maybe those are things that, in the long run, should be valued more, seen as more significant than a published book with one’s name on the spine and front cover.
But wait one moment. Rejection has a certain meaning in the old world of publishing. Will that change as publishing migrates online and ebooks multiply like fireflies around the porch light? No question about it, change is already here. We are entering an new digital age where the old notion of rejection of book will radically alter. No one will have the patience to accumulate 11,000 rejections. They won’t need to wait for one rejection from a traditional publisher. Here’s why. Everyone now has access to make their books available to the whole world by simply uploading it. Others will be invited to read, download, buy or share it. In this new age of publishing, rejection will gather a new meaning. But it won’t be rejection at the gateway to readers.
It will be inside the beltway of readers that rejection will bite like a pit bull.
In this new world where everyone can claim to be an author, rejection will come as “authors” realize that only 82 of every 11,000 online authors are worth reading and indeed are read. The book with a few hits will become the new measurement of rejection. There will be sly ways sold to online authors to pump up their number of readers. That will soon be exposed as fraud. Rejection will be coded in new ways. Don’t think technology will abolish it. That won’t happen. People will still complain and wail of the unfairness of it all. In the end, old age, new age publishing, the bottom line is pretty much the same. There are only a small number of authors worth reading. Making it easier to be “published” doesn’t make it any easier to attract an audience.
Great or even good writing is rare. If you are an avid reader, finding an author you want to read has always been like panning for gold. In the future, readers will miss the old publishing system, imperfect as it was, when editors and agents waded into the murky waters, panning for gold. They published stuff that wasn’t gold. But that is only human. Readers have great expectations when they read a story or book or poem and most of them hate going through tons of gravel looking for a few specs of gold. Instead of those polite, meaningless form letters from traditional publishers, readers may not be so kind when their anger and disappointment of reading an inferior work causes them to shout insults. If I had to make a prediction, rejection is set to become much nastier, personal, and demoralizing. The new crop of authors will look back with longing at how civilized the old world of rejection really was.
February 26th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
Clint Eastwood said it best to his boss as Dirty Harry: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Most, unfortunately, do not. I make my living rearranging and distilling words. Specifically, having other people I have trained distill the words – I then proof read and edit those words and charge a fee to law firms for the finished product. I found a money trail and tapped into it. It is not sexy; it is not glamorous. It does pay the bills and it does allow me to travel, which is sexy. I came up with the idea when I met a man in Sacramento who started a surprisingly successful business picking up dog shit in people’s backyards. I was fascinated that a living could be made this way. As I talked to the owner he informed me that he didn’t actually pick up the dog shit himself – he had other people do that. He simply was the “dog shit rain maker” if you will. More fascination on my part. My point being is that people would be much better off to think of ways they can make money doing something no one wants to do rather than something everyone dreams of doing. There is little rejection in the world of dog shit picker uppers. In fact most people are absolutely thrilled you came along. Less shit for them to do. Bill Maher has said that every time an Academy Award winner says, “If my dreams can come true so can yours”, there should be a person standing behind the winner saying, “No they can’t.” I am with Bill. In fact I want that job. I would be damn good at it too. I look good in a tuxedo. Then again, who doesn’t?
“Great or even good writing is rare.”
I am with you on this point. That’s why it so much fun when the nuggets show up in your pan. I often read a well written sentence two or three times while reading a novel – i have done it countless times while reading your novels. It slows down the reading time but increases my enjoyment. I sure hope the internet doesn’t make the nuggets even harder to find or worse yet encourage people to Google for their nuggets in milliseconds rather than take the time to enjoy the pleasure of reading an entire novel. If that ever happens our world would have gone to the dogs.
February 28th, 2010 at 8:43 am
Kevin, part of the reason for blogging is to receive such thought-provoking replies. Bill Maher is right of course. It is one thing to encourage aspirations–those are the material from which dreams are woven. The problem is with expectations about such dreams. In the real world, dreams about a successful career in the arts rarely converts into money, status and recognition. This is one of those hard lessons in life.
March 1st, 2010 at 11:24 pm
Perhaps this is why so many great artists have lost their minds before achieving recognition and fame. Rejection wears you down. But what else is there, really, to do but persevere? Winston Churchill told us to never never never give up. Little leaguers are not allowed to quit. Quitters never win, winners never quit. We’ve been inundated with messaging from birth not to give up. You work hard, do your best, put your best foot forward, and then bill maher comes along, happily grinding his heel into your toes.
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:26 am
Sandy – I think Bill is being honest and doing a service – like Simon at times on American Idol; some dreams should be crushed so the person can get on with reality. The last person I remember giving that speech was Halle Berry – a genetic 1 in 10,000,000 marvel if ever there was one. For the record I believe the “dog shit picker uppers” lose their minds proportionally to the artists – it’s just that their legacy hardly qualifies for further review.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
In my opinion, Westerners, I can type from first hand experience, are brainwashed into wanting, needing, expecting and expected to be — number 1 — to be successful. Until I, you, and anyone else is actually content with being number 300 million, we have a serious, fundamental problem. One does not need to be a financial success to be a writer, one simply needs to write. I am a musician but don’t make much money at it, and I imagine I get just about as much enjoyment from my noise as Chopin, happy birthday to him — 200 years. Writers write, singers sing, dancers dance, etc. One does not have to be a movie star to be an actor. One does not have to sell books to be a novelist. Money is not art. Hopefully.
March 2nd, 2010 at 3:17 pm
John- My Thai wife and I have a running joke. I say, America number 1 in …” She responds, “I like being number 62″. And she does and I learn from her every day. I agree with what you say above and as long as people keep their expectations in order all should be fine. I must add that I admire artists – having little artistic talent myself – but I admire an artist who can turn his art into financial reward even more. It’s the same with my barber. If you are a bad barber pretty soon no one will go to you – if you are good barber they will – both guys may enjoy cutting hair but only one will survive financially. Capitalism is not all bad – even for the arts.
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:00 pm
Chris, you’ve gotten some thoughtful replies here, haven’t you? Helluva it is, there’s truth in them all, as well as in your original entry.
I can assure you that your prediction about rejection in the Age of the Internet is absolutely correct, having already experienced it. More than once someone has written me — usually anonymously or under a pseudonym unknown to me — absolutely ripping something or the other I’ve run live on the Web to pieces. And wishing sticks of dynamite up my derriere, whatever. In the case of the U.S., perhaps this is but a tiny reflection of the utter loss of civility in our public national discourse. (Do Canadians ever fight? — I mean really fight, like, say, Rebs and Yanks or Texans and Oklahomans do???) Do people from Alberta punch out people from Newfoundland?)
You know why people hope, under whatever paradigm: “And there came Berthina Grothrupos, all 300 pounds of her, yet again, with yet another manuscript. The editor took pity, and told her, ‘There, just put it there, and I’ll take a look’,” not intending to really give her a chance.
A million copies later, she’s been on every talk show and signed to a three-book contract, and her book is in the running for every major prize there is.
One a a gazillion-gazillion — but people always hope.
And for the rest of us, it’s impossible *not* to admire such people, no matter how downright stupid their behavior is from any practical point of view.
A friend of mine of many years who majored in psychology but never write his doctoral dissertation (having decided not to become a practicing psychologist) calls “Berthina’s” state of mind “the ‘La Mancha’ state of being.” Ands that’s likely as good a way to express it as any, I suppose.
Hope the next novel is flowing easily. Well, howe about “efficiently”???
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:16 pm
there are a lot of crappy writers out there who genuinely CAN’T write. writing is a talent. it is like playing the violin or swimming. some just don’t have that spark. and i’m sorry because as a writer myself i may sound conceited. but as a half-decent writer i also GET to be conceited, because i am flustered by this modern, egalitarian, self-help-inspired non-sense that “anyone” can write.
March 3rd, 2010 at 5:36 pm
I appreciate the comments. I have a couple of more reflections to add.
The motives and expectations of those attracted to the “arts” are a mixed bag. If you play the guitar with a group of friends at a local bar and you don’t worry about drawing in a big audience, writing original music, or selling DVDs, you can simply enjoy the process, the atmosphere, being in the flow that comes with music. If you enjoy the creative aspect of life—painting, writing, or play an instrument—and that provides satisfaction, joy, happiness, you’ve achieved success on a personal level. If it has enriched your life, given you some deeper understanding of yourself, connected you with others who share similar sensibilities—you can count yourself lucky. These reasons are sufficient in themselves to write, paint or play the guitar.
Where people go off the rails is when the process becomes an agony. You are twisted in knots over how to write a query letter, find an agent, make a website, the thousand small details that nothing to do with writing as writing but has everything to do with writing as a commercial activity.
Engaging in the arts for most people is an either or situation: either personal or commercial reasons. The fact that a tiny percentage can have both makes people try like hell to fit themselves into the top of one percent. That is hard. One percent remains just that no matter how you cut it (an in reality it is far less than one percent). The wise artist comes to some inner peace by accepting that his or her personal reasons are enough to keep writing.
If the day-to-day focus is on your new life as a published writer, an alarm bell should be ringing inside your head. If what keeps you writing is that at the end of the journey what you’ve produced is going to make you famous and rich, the chances are great that you will be in for major heartbreak. That dream should cause a five-alarm warning bell to ring inside your head. You don’t need to be a great or even good writer to get published, but the odds of that happening are small.
Find joy in the small, the personal, the here and now, embrace a friend, not a trend. Clear your head about the future; fill it with the present.
March 4th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Most everyone you know, and you, will be dead relatively soon.
It should be undisputed that we/me/you should strive to be in better physical and mental shape — to fulfill our/your existence.
The question (if you still field questions) then becomes: “in better shape for what?”
Prose? Poetry? Melody? Episodic TV scripts? Third world taxi driving? Procreating?
Have you finished your rice? Then wash your bowl.
Did you breath out?
Then breath back in.
March 4th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
I’ve been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it’s the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
You’ll get up and do it again
Amen
Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
…out into the cool of the evening, strolls the pretender – Jackson Browne
March 7th, 2010 at 10:04 am
Chris:
In your March 3rd comment, you brought up the commercial aspect of writing. Well, okay, you had some focus on that in your original post, but in the later comment, that side of the matter dominates.
That shifts the discussion a bit; in the blog entry you wrote, rejection slips (for instance) come in. Those straddle the border dividing the creative side from the business side, in a way; sending a manuscript out and awaiting the result are the twin links between the creative stage and the ending-up-published-I-hope business stage.
But you’re right, in your follow-on comment, to bring in the minutae, such as a website. And that is a pain in the neck; it’s hard to remember, when one’s trying to figure out for the first time how to insert a photo or video or audio file, that this stuff actually can help sell books (or whatever).
I’ve often wondered something about people who are glearly truly creative — I mean folks with the fire *and* the talent to have some sort of decent chance of making it, making it with reviewers if not necessarily monetarily — are “genetically indisposed” to bother with this part of the business side.
Part of that aversion stems, I suppose, from fear, fear of taking on a task that is unattractive (and maybe unpleasant), will take time (maybe a bunch), may not help one jot (neither in terms of sales nor in terms of getting *favorable* reviews), and — this is underplayed — may be used by others against one.
Let me cite one example from my personal “files” involving someone not involved inthe arts but who faced the concerns I just listed in the paragraph above. That example is my Mother.
Mom resisted even getting a computer up until around 1997. Once she got one, she really took to it, but in very narrow ways, primarily using it for e-mail, geneological research (at which she has become rather expert, btw), plain surfing aimlessly, stopping when she came across something interesting, and playing games. (!!!NOTHER!!!) She also had a business that could benefit greatly from a website, but for a host of reasons, she didn’t want to learn how to build one, register a domain name, etc.
Eventually, a friend offered to build her a simple site and to take care of the gritty details such as domain registration and uploading stuff. And she (the friend) did all that.
But at one point, for reasons even Mom still doesn’t know, she couldn’t get the password when she wanted to have it.
That’s where the last factor I mentioned, the fear that someone else may use something against you, comes in. At one point she told me she wished she had never had a website posted in the first place, as she was unable to make some changes — more exactly, have her grandson do so — to her website, changes the friend who originally did the website either couldn’t or didn’t have time to handle. And since the friend did all that stuff for free, Mom couldn’t very well complain.
I suspect a great many artists might find themselves in a comparable situation, unwilling to take on the tasks themselves BUT unable to pay someone to do so — thus ending up asking a friend to take on various tasks (not just a website, but maybe even something as basic as typing).
That sort of experience or fear of such an experience surely must interfere with the flow of an artist’s creative juices — lessening his chances even more of ever getting published, or booking a meaningful gig for his garage band, or whatever is relevant to the chosen art form.
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Another aspect you mention is that a person with an artistic bent may well find satisfaction in ways other than professional success. I suppose just about all of us who ever fool around with a musical instrument, take some good photos (as opposed to snapping away with abandon but without a care, including without a care to lighting, framing, etc.), or get seriously involved in cooking must dream, at some point, of stepping out onto a stage to thunderous applause, of having a collection of photos exhibited in some famous venue and for the exhibition to win critical acclaim, to achieve success as a celebrity chef.
But you’re right: many of us with artistic aspirations (or “pretensions,” if you prefer), find satisfaction — or is it solace? — from other sorts of feedback. A friend asks us to play background piano music at her wedding reception. Or maybe asks us to write a romantic poem for his wife for Valentine Day. Or to take pictures at their business’s grand opening. Those are acknowledgements of appreciation of what we’re trying to do.
And they can be enough.
This is a fascinating thread, Chris.
March 8th, 2010 at 10:41 am
Thanks for sharing your views, Kurt. What is “quality” is slowly being wrestled away from the traditional vetting source: agents and editors. It wasn’t a perfect system. It was and remains on what professionals belief can be sold in the marketplace. The decision makers could sometimes be hugely wrong. Being wrong sometimes doesn’t equate with being wrong all of the time. The old system of publishing by looking for quality (in a commercial context) reduced the quantity of works available. Now quantity rules. And everyone starts to realize that once that gateway has opened the reading public gets to do what agents and editors have always done: look for the needle in the haystack. And a haystack that grows day by day until you forget what a needle looks like.