Over the course of 16 years, I’ve tried various methods
towards getting a book deal—several different agents, submitting to publishers
myself, and getting an
MFA. I faithfully followed all other prescribed paths,
which include but are not limited to: conferences, critique groups,
self-publishing, and contests.
You name it, and I did it and if you’ve been following this
blog, you’ve probably read about it here.
I know what you are thinking because it’s what I thought for
years when I would start saying that I was wasting my time. You’re saying, You can’t fail if you try. It’s all part of
the process. Your time will come. NEVER give up. All the platitudes, all
the self-affirmation, all the blind faith, all of it—every single bit of it no
longer is encouraging or helpful to me. It’s become a waste of my time, time
that is so very precious and so very limited.
My only New Year’s resolution this year was to let go of
trying. Initially, I had two really good reasons to, at the very least, take a
break. One, was my agent fired me (or we mutually parted, depends on how you
look at it), and two, I was back in school and the workload was increasing
exponential.
The truth was, I had wanted to quit for YEARS.
***
Over the final five years of my quest to become a
traditionally published novelist, not only did my desire to chase the dream
wan, but also another dream began to emerge. A dream that I couldn’t ignore any
longer.
From the time I was in high school and probably long before
then, if you talk to my middle school or grammar school friends, I wanted to be
a psychotherapist. In fact, when I was in high school, I was a Natural Helper,
which was this program that you were put into by your peers who would fill out
anonymous surveys about who in the school they felt they could talk to about
their problems. And, when I was 16 and a CIT at summer camp for creative
writing, my camp friends voted me to be Most Likely To Be Psychoanalyzing Saddam Hussein on CNN. Then
later, as a teacher, my students often came to me with there problems and not just
the academic ones but biggies—sexual identity confusion, pregnancy, bullying.
And the whole time I took it for granted…in that I minimized
its significance and my own talent for listening and helping.
The older I became and the more my tutoring business began
to be successful and the more requests I received from clients to be their
therapist or their child’s therapist, the more I couldn’t ignore the quiet
calling I felt—to give myself over to the world of counseling. At least three
or four cases a year would start off as tutoring in writing or assisting in the
college application process and then quickly make a sharp turn into counseling.
These clients weren’t just struggling with typical stress from life and school,
but many times their struggles were with serious issues like cutting, eating
disorders, and bipolar depression. Never did I make a claim to be a therapist
and always did I refer people out to licensed professionals. But as these years
went by and more and more people were saying, not only did they wish I were
their therapist but also, when will you
finally go get your license so I can refer people to you?
A year from now, I will have completed my license, and for
over a year, I’ve been working in a group practice in Warwick. This dream is
coming true.
***
Sometimes we have a desire, a passion for something, and we
think that we are supposed to make it our whole life, our career. I’ve learned
that there are different types of passions and some are meant to become a
career and others are meant to be something else.
Teaching and counseling have always come easy to me.
Writing, itself, has always come easy, too. Publishing my writing and pursuing
a career as a writer has been filled with terrible struggle, like dating the
wrong guy you are terribly attracted to, like a bad but electrifying romance.
***
My acupuncturist described my struggle with writing and
publishing like the struggle of her infertile patients…they work really hard to
get pregnant, but it doesn’t happen. Then they finally let go of the struggle
and hard work, and you guessed it, they get pregnant.
But not always. Sometimes they let go, don’t ever get
pregnant but instead adopt or in some cases, give up and dedicate themselves to
a fulfilling career or to being an awesome aunt or pet parent.
The cliché is true—when
one door closes, another opens.
I love to write, but I never enjoyed publishing. It was
always hard and relatively unfulfilling. It was always filled with struggle
that never felt any sense of relief or satisfaction. And then it began to eat
away at my love for reading and writing, that’s when I realized something was
very, very wrong here.
I guess it’s how I feel about yoga. I used to be a very
dedicated student of yoga, and at one time was asked to teach it. When that
happened, all of the sudden I hated it, and I struggled with it. I lost that
passion for it I once had. So I canceled the weekend certification course I had
signed up for and told the manager at the local gym I couldn’t do it. Then I
found myself back in love with yoga.
Just because you are good at something doesn’t mean you have
to make it your career and just because you have a passion for something
doesn’t mean you have to pursue it to death. Some things, like yoga and now
writing, are hobbies that I love for the sake of what they are and struggling
with them simply isn’t worth the emotional toll it takes on me.
So my energy now is on finishing up course work to get my
license to be a Mental Health Counselor and to open up my own small practice. I
see writing as a part of the work I do, and I see myself still being a writing
coach and tutor, but I see other things like teaching at a college and also
supervising other emerging counselors.
***
We are so terrified of failure in this culture. We must
succeed at every endeavor and if we stop trying or pursuing a goal, even if
that goal no longer holds interest within us, we have failed and even if that
failure is a blessing, we can’t see that. We see failure as weak.
***
The years pursuing becoming a novelist were not a waste—the
experiences I had and the people I met along the way enriched my life and
widened my perspective on myself, my writing, and the publishing world. The
biggest gift was the community of people who understood the weird and
terrifying life of being a writer and it was awesome to feel so understood.
The waste was the beating myself up when I got to a point
where I didn’t want to do it any more but felt I should. After about 8 years of
trying to get several novels traditionally published, I was exhausted and
really wanted to stop the submissions game. Not only had I been pursuing that,
but I also had self-published three novels that actually were pretty
well-received. So, I thought the best place to “rest” was an MFA program, which,
truthfully, I feel, saved my sanity. I left my then-agent and spent the next
two years in a cocoon of a writing community and didn’t worry about agents or
publishing.
The desire to stop happened gradually, rather than all at
once. There was a period of time after I completed my MFA where I had this
manic surge of energy to get back out and try again. But this time it was not
about loving writing or even believing in my work, but it was more of anger
like, fuck you, I ‘m gonna show you whose
boss.
I created
Sucker Literary and it was a labor of love and it
was my
fuck you to publishing (think
about the name, after all). Then I had two giant strokes of good luck…getting
featured in
Publishers Weekly and signing with a new agent who had sought
me out. Yet, my gut, the entire time,
was telling me something was off. But I surged forward in this angry and
frantic state and spent the next five years in misery, which was funny because
in many ways I almost had everything I had dreamed of having…and the goal of
published novelist seemed within my grasp.
Hindsight is not necessarily 20-20. Meaning, I could look
back and say, well, that’s why ultimately
my novels never got picked up…because my heart center wasn’t in the writing I
was doing. But I don’t believe that is why my novels didn’t get picked up.
Plenty of people have their novels published that are formulaic and not from
their purpose place or heart center. So when I look back, I don’t know why
those manuscripts never got published, but I can say now that I’m sort of glad
they didn’t. Because I wasn’t happy writing them. I felt a sense of disconnect
and fear. It’s scary to admit that I spent about 5 years doing something I
really hated, especially when it was once something I loved.
Don’t get me wrong. I still love to write. Fortunately, that
never wavered during this time period. What I don’t like is writing out of a
fear of failure, writing to prove something to someone…someone I don’t even
know and haven’t even met.
And I don’t hate publishing. I just don’t like the game of
it. Never been a good game player. That’s why, right now, I’m not playing the
game. I’m not looking for an agent or a publisher. But I’m writing. I will
always be writing. And publishing, I’ll always be doing that, too.
