A week ago today, I stayed up all night only to fall asleep at about 9am. This is not a surprising set of hours for someone who’s unemployed. But rather than spending it watching as many episodes of Boohbah on Youtube that my sense of sanity could withstand, I was in fact working on something. As it turned out, it was not without the usual irony of fate or hubris.
I woke up again at about half 12. In what is now an almost autonomic response, I reached down beside the bed for my laptop to check my email. There was one new message waiting for me. It was accompanied by a sense of deja vu, largely because I’d frequently dreamt of waking to find such a particular email from a specific sender. The sender’s name was the most recent prospective agent I’d sent my novel to, the title of my novel was the subject. I closed my eyes and clicked on it.
I didn’t close my eyes fast enough. The first word I saw, soon tattooed in negative on my inner eye lid: ‘rejection’. At the time I didn’t feel rejection. I certainly wasn’t surprised. I suppose I didn’t really feel anything at all. Like my apparently futile attempts to find work, I’m used to finding myself unceremoniously dolloped back at square one after each effort and attempt. I took a deep breath and opened my eyes to read more, specifically the words before it – “Please do not be disheartened by this or other rejections.” ‘Excellent,’ I thought. ‘I have succeeded already in not being disheartened.’ It’s not exactly a new experience after all, and anyone with the insanity to call themselves a writer should expect it more often than not.
I was about to read on when sudden panic immediately hit me as the words “other rejections” reverberated inside my skull. Surely this means she anticipated I’m going to be rejected again for this story. Perhaps again and again. Suddenly “do not be disheartened by this or other rejctions” became “expect other rejections”, which instantly evolved into “your novel is not publishable” that condensed into “you’re not good enough”. In no time at all a vinyl loop was scratching into my brain’s soft, vulnerable tissue “you’re not good enoughyou’re not good enoughyou’re not good enoughyou’re not good enough…”
Once I’d calmed down and my neuroses had deflated a little, I could see the same good advice offered in her letter as that of the late Pat Kavanagh. More importantly, she too had evidently actually read what I’d sent her, and I was grateful for that. It felt like I’d been given a fair chance, rather than just wasted money, time and good quality anxiety in sending something to be merely left on the corner of an unused desk for three months before returning it to me with a template “no, ta.”
This is what I started work on early that morning – a microsite for the aforementioned novel, Beasts of the Field. It’s not the slickest site ever designed, nor is it now the most original way to promote a book (other lucky souls have now not only the resources to produce sites twice as visually impressive and in half the time, but get paid for doing so). However, it is original to me, and it’s a labour of love. It was an idea I came up with some time ago after reflecting on something I’m proud of – a novel that took me two and a half years to write. And it’s one of the most satisfying feelings known to anyone who writes to read back over old scrawl and become excited by what you’ve created.
Such things become your children. You can worry about them, fuss over them, you can go through all the usual unnecessary self-blame and guilt when they somehow don’t turn out how you expected. But no real parent can never truly abandon them.
Of course you get disheartened, but of course you keep on going, no matter what. These things are givens – what else can you do? It’s staying excited that’s the struggle – remaining enthusiastic about the creation you’ve invested years of thought, energy, feeling and hard work in.
Enthusiasm is everything. You must remain enthusiastic about your own work. You have to keep faith in yourself, not lose it. You can be a good writer, you can be a bad one – it doesn’t really matter which. Being a good writer has nothing to do with being able to get a book published. In the end, what does is all down to self-belief and a lot of bloody-minded persistence.
Hello Ben,
I wanted to thank you for your recent comments on my post, “Letting Go”.
It’s interesting that you mention revisiting old journal entries. This is something that I did recently and I was surprised by the fact that I have been writing about similar themes and ideas throughout the years. It’s like a mysterious thread running through my life.
Reading my old journals was like visiting an old acquaintance that I had somehow lost touch with, but who has always been there.
It was an interesting experience, and even though lot of the writing was remarkably naive and self-indulgent there was also some penetrating questions of real substance, of a real search.
As a writer, I find myself crushed by self-doubt continually. I seem to be either going up or going down ladders.
We all need encouragement in this lonely endeavor, even if it’s someone I don’t know who takes the time to write a few words of comment on something that I have written. It is good to know that you have truly touched someone.
When I feel lost in the storm of self doubt I forget that, like writing itself, it is probably a process much larger than “me” that I know nothing about, it’s part of the ebb and flow of everything, but of course I personalize everything so I often get sucked into my self deprecation.
So recently I found myself in the mud and I came across these quotes somewhat miraculously at the time I needed them. I think you may find these words encouraging as well:
“To live in the presence of great truths and eternal laws, to be led by permanent ideals – that is what keeps a man patient when the world ignores him, and calm and unspoiled when the world praises him.”
- Honore De Balzac
“I don’t deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.”
- G.K. Chesterton
“Do not quit. You see, the most constant state of an artist is uncertainty. You must face confusion, self-questioning, dilemma. Only amateurs are confident . . . be prepared to live with the fear of failure all your life.”
- William Ormond Mitchell
You are a good writer. I wonder if the amount of good writers who will remain uforever unrecognised exceeds the amount of those lucky enough to have received some acknowledgment?
Contentment needn’t be dependent on talent, let alone worldly recognition. But the goal of earning money through creative self-expression, rather than through compromised labour, is a good one to pursue with some determination, I think.