Pep Talks for Writers Page 14
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” Shakespeare famously wrote. Except that’s not quite right. Each word carries connotations, layers of life. So by simply changing your name, you become a different kind of rose, a different kind of writer.
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BECOME SOMEONE ELSE
Choose a name and create a character background for this new author—this new version of you. Write a story, a poem, even just a scene by inhabiting this new self, and see what different words emerge. If you want to take it one step further, create a Twitter account for your new authorial self. Who does your nom de plume follow? How does he or she comment on the world? Become someone different.
45
PERSISTING THROUGH REJECTION
To be rejected is to be an author. Sometimes a publisher rejects your work. Sometimes a friend or family member responds unfavorably. Sometimes you reject yourself. Rejection for a writer is akin to water for a fish, except rejection doesn’t include the life-giving nutrients and oxygen that water provides for a fish.
Or does it?
Years and years ago, before I truly knew anything about the writing life, I took a karate class. I was no Bruce Lee. My body has never been limber, and my balance has always been wobbly, which was why I decided to take the class. On the first day, the instructor introduced the concept of Osu, a Japanese contraction of the words Oshi (meaning push) and Shinobu (meaning to endure) that is a key concept of karate meaning patience, determination, and perseverance. My instructor told me that students aren’t expected to say things like “Yes, sir,” when given a command, but to instead say, “Osu”—I will endeavor. It’s a subtle distinction, but an important one. By saying Osu, you’re saying that you will forbear during the stresses of training, that you will persist and keep trying. The emphasis is on striving, not simply doing it.
It isn’t easy. Rejection can feel like not just one person rejecting you, but an entire conspiracy of all the universe’s forces. Fear of rejection is in our cells—we don’t want to be expelled from our tribe. Rejection is generally not personal, though. It can be random, accidental, or entirely ill-considered. I’ve read story submissions for several magazines, and if you read 300 stories with the goal of selecting 10 for publication, do you know how many stories almost make the cut? There are so many ties, so many almosts. And then, yes, the criteria is inherently subjective. There isn’t an objective rubric to judge the merit of a story. In the end, it’s always about the editors’ tastes and publication goals. Which is why so many wonderful books have faced a slew of rejections.
Madeleine L’Engle received 26 rejections before getting A Wrinkle in Time published. Stephen King received dozens of rejections for Carrie before it was accepted. Beatrix Potter had so much trouble publishing The Tale of Peter Rabbit, she initially had to self-publish it. “Nobody will want to read a book about a seagull,” an editor wrote to Richard Bach about Jonathan Livingston Seagull. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was described in a rejection letter as “an absurd and uninteresting fantasy which was rubbish and dull.”
When faced with rejection, our instinct is to recoil with self-loathing, but one thing I’m sure these authors knew is that the most painful thing is often the best thing for your work. Despite the stings of rejection, you have to find a way to make rejection your friend. A rejection can lacerate the soul like few other things, but you have to find a way for your hope to live and grow within that incision. Rejection is an opportunity to look at your work and analyze it from the point of view of an editor or agent—or your best friend who reacted in a not quite complimentary manner. Rejection teaches a writer that valuable skill that every writer needs to know: to listen, to consider, but to also know when to say to hell with you. A rejection is an invitation—a peculiar invitation, a cold invitation, but, still, an invitation—to improve your story, to keep going. Rejection teaches independence, strength, and grace.
I know, I know—despite whatever heartening words I write here, rejection never feels good. We’re social animals, genetically wired to seek approbation, if not celebration, so rejection on any level can feel like we’re not good enough to be with the others. The ignominy of rejection is such that I sometimes prefer physical pain. Rejection can knock the wind out of you, and if you’re not careful, it can be a force of asphyxiation. I’ve been asked by many a writer when they should stop—either writing entirely, or on a piece that has amassed rejections. There isn’t an answer. A rejection creates a fork in the road, defines which way you’re going to go and how. Your determination shouldn’t lead to an unreasonable stubbornness that prevents you from pursuing more fruitful creative projects. On the other hand, if you feel the passion, the interest, the obsession to keep going, then keep going.
Rejection teaches independence, strength, and grace.
I’ve received so many rejections that my skin is as thick and calloused as an alligator’s, yet I still often plummet into a sinkhole when I receive a rejection. That’s where Osu comes in. When you receive rejection, focus on pushing, enduring. Practice not taking the rejection personally. Practice not getting angry, not blaming the stupid system that is rigged against you. Practice not complaining to the universe that your friend is a dumb reader with an ungenerous spirit. Practice the graceful approach of acceptance—because beating yourself up is counterproductive to your creativity. Practice thinking of rejection as an opportunity—to improve your story, to fortify your endurance, to make a statement by not giving up. Sometimes an editor might like your work but just doesn’t think it will sell. Sometimes your writing group friend is just in a bad mood, or doesn’t know how to give constructive help.
“I love my rejection slips. They show me I try,” said Sylvia Plath.
Rejection is a sign that you’re living to the fullest, that you’re pushing boundaries, opening doors. Because do you know the best way to not be rejected? Don’t put yourself out there. Many a writer is cosseted by a world in which rejection hasn’t been risked. It’s a comfy strategy, but it’s guaranteed to limit one’s growth. Put yourself out there, and you’ll find the special nourishment that only rejection can provide.
TRY THIS
SAY OSU
Write the word Osu on a piece of paper and hang it above your desk. When you start writing each day, take a moment to say Osu to yourself and think about what it will mean to your writing. The next time you feel rejected, say Osu to yourself, and reflect on how you can have patience, determination, and perseverance. Revere the art of pushing and enduring and make it part of your attitude.
46
KNOW THYSELF
To write your story, your way, can be one of the most challenging things you can do as a writer.
When I first decided to become a writer, a friend of my parents, who was obviously concerned about my ability to make a living as a writer, took me aside and told me, “If I were you, I’d get the top five novels on the New York Times bestseller list, and I’d study them and then do exactly what they do.”
Fortunately, in my youthful confidence, if not my youthful arrogance, I disregarded his advice. It wasn’t that I wanted to ignore the ways I could learn from other writers, but I wanted to find myself in my writing—create myself, in fact. Writing was about expression to me, not mindless adherence to a template of supposed success. My parents’ friend was talking about product development—figuring out what the storytelling widgets were and then putting them in their proper places—whereas I was concerned about matters of the soul. Because that’s the way I think of writing, as a sacred matter that should be protected and revered.
Still, I often think about his advice because I’m increasingly aware of the churnings of the marketplace, the latest hot author—a “new voice,” an “amazing debut!” The ways others write, their stylistic flourishes, their narrative devices, seep into me. I think of the novels that I read in college and the novels reviewed in last Sunday’s New York Times. I think of the novels people have told me about and the nove
ls I see on the shelves at my favorite bookstore. The purity of expression I sought as that young author—the unique story—often gets tangled in the skein of all these voices.
We all write with others in the room with us. No matter the degree of our solitude, others are always peering over our shoulders and reading along. I often hear one of my favorite writers giving suggestions, telling me to not write like a Hallmark card. An imaginary editor advises the story move in a certain direction to keep the pacing moving. An agent frowns and says, “Here’s what you have to do if you want this to sell.” When I was in a writing critique group, I became so aware of the prevalent tastes of some of the members that I found myself writing not in the service of the story, but to what would please them.
Writing to please quickly became boring to me, though. I wasn’t writing with the mysterious pursuit that makes writing so meaningful. Nothing surprised me, and if an author isn’t surprised and enchanted by his or her work, then it’s unlikely the reader will be. I worried that I’d develop into the kind of writer who lived for a mythical reader, but would end up with an impoverished relationship with that reader because I wasn’t writing for myself. Writing, before it is anything else, is a way of clarifying one’s thoughts and has a value apart from even the desirability of any other reader. “When I am composing, I try to clear my mind of having to publish, or having to sell a book or find readers. That kind of thinking gets in the way,” says Maxine Hong Kingston.
I often think about what I consider the most useful two words to life as a writer (or to life in general). I discovered them in my college freshman humanities class: the Greek maxim “Know thyself,” which is a warning to pay no attention to the opinion of the multitudes. Such a thing seemed simple to me as an 18-year-old, but it took me another 20 years or so to realize just how difficult it is to know thyself.
It’s difficult. We’re elusive creatures by design, always changing, seeking, and fleeing. We learn to do most things through mimicry. A child learns to speak through the words heard from a parent. I’ve certainly learned how to write by mimicking other writers to various degrees. My voice works through the voices of so many others, so the uniqueness of my expression is more of a collage than a singular voice. I filter my words through subconscious juries, subconscious mentors. Even as I empty myself of the words of others, I embrace all the discourses that have woven their way into my being.
Always answer to yourself. Every time you sit down to write, think about what you want to say.
Because of this babel that I exist in, I have to pause from time to time and ask myself who is writing this story? Is it a story that I find emotionally and intellectually gripping? Am I writing within someone else’s box, to another’s prescription? Or am I writing what makes my hair stand on end, what makes my heart melt? Am I in charge of this?
I sometimes imagine Herman Melville writing today. If he was in a workshop or writing group, I’m sure no one would advise him to include the voluminous expository digressions on the lore of whaling in Moby Dick. What editor would publish the novel? Obviously the narrative would be more straightforward and clean without them, but to me they are vital to the texture, to the enormity of the feeling of the story. I like to think that Melville wouldn’t listen to anyone telling him to write Moby Dick differently. I hope so. Because he was in charge of his story.
When Junot Diaz read Moby Dick, he said it was a book that included “twenty-five Englishes,” and he had a dream of writing a book that would express all the languages he knew. He approached language as something that was pliant, not set in stone, but living and moving. He harvested language from the speech around him and from the books he read, and he composed his stories in a Spanglish that’s soaring and allusive in a groundbreaking way. It was a daring and brave thing to write in such a way, and he certainly risked editorial pushback. But he was in charge of his story, in service to all the languages necessary to tell his story, not to a product.
It’s a balancing act to write for other people—to find a way to give them your story in its purist form—but not to listen to them too much. Always answer to yourself. Every time you sit down to write, think about what you want to say.
TRY THIS
WRITE YOUR STORY, YOUR WAY
Pause to identify the voices within yourself. Ask yourself this question: Are you writing your story a different way because of another’s judgment or tastes? If so, has that led the story in a good direction?
47
MAKE IRRITANTS INTO A SYMPHONY
Stuck in traffic? Waiting on hold to contest the traffic ticket you didn’t pay because you didn’t deserve it, and now they’ve doubled the fine? Trying to read a magazine article, but subscription cards keep falling out?
Life’s annoyances have a way of piling up. They’re contagious. That pile of junk mail that you haven’t sorted through gnaws at you after a hard day at work, and you’re still upset that you can’t remember that great idea you had at three in the morning and neglected to write down, and when you open up your laptop, you’re greeted by smudgy fingerprints that just won’t go away.
Annoyances needle us. They weasel their way into our brains and stage a takeover that goes way beyond the importance they merit. They are villains who can suck away the joy and meaning of life and spark outsized anger in even the most patient person. As a result, they’re an enemy of your creativity. If you focus on one annoyance, you’ll most likely go looking for others.
I often think of the experimental composer John Cage’s view of the cacophonous sounds of New York city’s streets. He would sit in his apartment and listen to the random blaring of horns, the churning of engines, the jeers of people yelling at each other, the braying of sirens, and instead of letting such unpleasant sounds intrude into his peace of mind and torque his equilibrium, he pretended as if each sound was part of a larger symphony.
I like this approach because creativity is a continual redefinition of the way things are supposed to be. Life’s irritants are like a training ground for a creative mind: how can you flip the scene to make it a symphony?
If we elevate the annoyances in our lives to the state of art, their oppressive powers are reduced or vanquished.
The next time you’re in a traffic jam, see if you can make it a study of movement, how cars inch forward differently, how the clouds move compared to the cars, how the shadows have their own separate life. When your waiter doesn’t refill your coffee, view it as an opportunity to ponder why he doesn’t look your way, what’s on his mind. Accept the sound of the person chewing popcorn in the movie as part of the movie itself, like the sound of the wind on a day at the beach. If we elevate the annoyances in our lives to the state of art, their oppressive powers are reduced or vanquished, so our artistic spirit can breathe.
Redefining life’s annoyances is part of your artistic ninja training. Ninjas trained their minds so that they could keep their equilibrium in the most trying conditions. To assist them in self-control during moments of danger, they’d practice kuji-kiri. Kuji-kiri means nine symbolic cuts, so they’d make symbolic hand gestures to focus their thoughts and achieve a certain mindset. The practice not only gave the ninja inner strength in dangerous moments, but it was also supposed to hypnotize the enemy into inaction. It was something like the evil eye or the casting of a hex.
You can cast a hex on the annoyances in life. Don’t let them intrude into your mind and steal those precious artistic moments—the mellifluous song that’s just beginning to find itself in the peaceful hum of your mind. By practicing to outwit and outfight the irritants of life, you’re preparing to conquer the bigger obstacles of creativity.
TRY THIS
TRANSFORM IRRITATIONS
What irritant have you encountered today—right now, even? Is it gnawing at you and tugging you away from the more pleasant dance you’re doing with a fabulous creative idea? See if you can redefine it as part of an art exhibit, a symphony, a play. The fly buzzing around the room is a maraca. The car a
larm outside is a trumpet. The sun needling your eyes is a spotlight on a stage. The dishes in the sink are part of a stage set—for a play about the making of your novel.
48
HOLD THINGS LIGHTLY
I have a paradoxical proposal for you: Take your creativity seriously, but hold it lightly.
It’s a Zen koan of sorts, a riddle. Much of the advice in this book is about digging in, fortifying your commitment, developing routines and systems of accountability. All of that is important. The novel you’re working on is important. The poem you wrote yesterday is important. The idea for a story that you’re going to get tomorrow morning is important.
At the same time, it’s all ephemeral. It’s easy to clutch your talons into a project, but the tighter you hold it, the less space you give it. Sometimes you clutch it so tightly that you’re unable to leave it behind, even though all signs point to moving on. It isn’t helpful to push, grab, or pull at things, and yet it is somehow easy to allow creativity to become such a melee.
I had a novel like this. I worked on it for 10 years. The longer I worked on it, the tighter I held onto it, even though I felt that there was something missing, something wrong. Still, I listened to all of the voices telling me to be determined, that my persistence would burnish whatever was missing, and with just one more draft, I would find the answers. One more draft came and went with another draft and then another draft. I found less and less meaning in my writing and only clung to it because I’d been working on it for so long—because it was my big work that I aimed to publish.