Success, Jealousy, Submission, and How Hard Are You Willing to Work

Well, I’ve been in a bit of a funk lately, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Sick cat, then putting her down, and a two week bout with some mystery virus that’s left me tired and worn out. I haven’t been writing, sending out, or promoting my new book enough. Enough for me to be happy with? Enough to be effective? But what does enough look like?

A little post on Medium this morning by my friend Kelli reminded me of this. This post reminded me that part of success really is, no matter what, tied to how hard you’re willing (and able) to work. You can have a ton of talent, wonderful writing, but if you don’t get it out of your head, out of your hard drive, out your door and into the world, guess what? No one will know. How women sabotage themselves by not thinking their work is good enough to send out, or, if they’re anything like me, they just think sending their work back to an editor who asks for more is “rude, because I should wait at least six months before submitting again.” Because that is what is in my head. A lot of rules that no one ever told me, that I just absorbed at some point from the world around me. I think of myself as a fairly aggressive submitter – I probably average about 20 subs at least per quarter. But maybe not aggressive enough?

A lot of the writing game is about numbers. The more you send out, most of the time, not always, but most of the time, the more you will get published. The more you write, the more you have to send out. So spending your time writing, polishing, and sending out your work will stop you from sabotaging your self. Spending your time feeling sad and listening to sad music and wishing you had things you don’t, well, that’s not so productive.

Sure, there are dream stories: the writers with 200K book deals right out of the MFA gates at 24. Poets & Writers always seems to have a lot of those quicky miracle success stories, though when I meet the poets and writers I admire in real life, they more often tell me stories of years of struggle, pain, impatience, rejection. Writers may seem to win awards and fellowships with ease; sometimes you will not feel good about it. Here’s a post I happened upon today, and I encourage you to read not just the letter and answer, but the comments, which tease out some subtleties that the letter and response, both being a little simplistic, do not: Dear Sugar on Writer Jealousy. Because there are some truths in the letter, the response, and the comments. Seeing people get the things you want and work for sometimes hurts. Sometimes that’s because we’re entitled, maybe, as Sugar suggests. Sometimes it’s because we feel insecure, as some of the commenters suggest. Do those feelings do us any good? Maybe, if it motivates us. Maybe, if it keeps us writing and sending out work.

I was thinking about the difference between my thirties, when I was more optimistic and energetic, maybe more insecure too, and now, in my forties, that I feel less insecure, but I’m getting worried that I’ve spent an awful lot of hours and emotional energy on something I’m never really going to get rewarded for. I genuinely feel happy when good things happen to my friends, even acquaintances, because I think: those people genuinely deserve it. They’ve worked hard, they’re great writers, and I think, yay, the system works! When it doesn’t happen for me, but it happens for them, at least it happened to someone good, someone who deserved it.

These days, and maybe it’s not just physical, I feel tired. Tired of sending things out to rejection or worse, no response at all. (It happens.) Tired of putting out my best efforts, to feel like they fall into a vacuum. I mean, for poets, this is normal, right? Most of the time, poets not only don’t win at life (historically, there’s a lot of consumption, alcoholism, and suicide in this line of work), they don’t get paid, they don’t get recognition, no one notices what they do. I’ve talked before about average book sales for poets. What is the real bar for this thing I think of as “poetry success?” What’s the difference between optimism and false hope? When you work as hard as you can, and the results aren’t what you’ve dreamed of, what then? I was just reading the comments of several women on Facebook, older than me, who have become so discouraged they haven’t stopped writing, but they’ve stopped even being interested in sending out work ever again. I hope that doesn’t happen to me. I am willing to work, but I worry that the discouragement gets to you over time, that the constant doubt, disappointment, and rejection somehow rewire our brains to think “I will never be successful at writing, so I give up.” I sometimes think, if I don’t get a “sign from the universe,” I’m going to do something else with my time and energy. But then I write another poem.