Still going farther, but not forever

I've wanted to be a writer since I was in the fourth grade and wrote stories about the super hero Electroman and his sidekick Fluffy, but I didn't work intentionally at it until I was 41. That may seem like a lie, since I had finished a B.A. and an M.A. in English by 31, the M.A. with a focus in creative writing. But I never really focused on the nuts and bolts of how to write. I just thought I'd read the writing of brilliant writers and somehow, I'd become brilliant, too. Like a lot of people who showed some ability at a young age, I was cocky, and I thought it was beneath me to do something as low-brow as read a book on how to write fiction. I got the results you'd expect from this approach, which is to say I failed, not only to get published, but also to write something worth reading. There were flashes of something interesting back then in what I wrote, but because I was too impatient wanting to be recognized for being brilliant, I only noticed the few flashes of what was good and refused to address the glaring holes. Then I quit, got a job, started a family, and didn't think much about writing for ten years. Work at least made me feel like I was good at something, and having a family scratched another deep itch.

On October 1st, 2013, my work shut down for four days. It wasn't a big deal, nothing more than what you might call a management dispute. It was a foregone conclusion that before too long, we'd get started back up and things would go back to normal. But for some reason, I found it so unsettling in those four days to not be at work, I started wondering what I would be without my job. Not much, it felt like. I needed to be something more than what I was at work. What else was there? It took about two seconds to realize what I wanted was to be a writer.

Maybe it was the wisdom of age, but this time, I was no longer too proud to look for help. I read a number of books on the mechanics of writing, figured out for about forty bucks what I'd gotten into 30K of debt failing to learn in grad school.

I didn't really have an organized list of goals in mind, but I knew I wanted to get somewhere. Looking back now, I think I can put my hoped-for progress into this order:

1) Write something
2) Write something I don't think is terrible
3) Submit something
4) Submit something and get proof someone else doesn't think it's terrible
5) Get something published by someone other than myself
6) Get more things published
7) Get something published in a place that's really hard to get published
8) Start to be recognized primarily as a writer

#8 is where I wanted to get to starting off back in October of 2013. Some of these steps took a lot longer than others. Going from one to five was actually not too painful. Once I was willing to learn a few things, it's amazing how quickly things came together a little bit. I had my first story published in under a year from when I started. But going from five to six--getting my second and third publications, that is--took longer than getting the first story published. I really was close to giving up. In fact, I did give up. It was after deciding to give up, in fact, that one story after another just poured out of me. I kept writing, all the time wondering why I was doing it, because I'd already quit. I got my second story published in fall 2016, then a month later the third, then the fourth a few months after that and finally the Washington Writers' Publishing House called me in February of 2017 to tell me I'd won their fiction contest and they were going to pay me to publish my book. Whatever else happens in my life, I've had a book published, which means I am a writer.

Life after the book

But I still wanted more, and here's where I get a little bit fuzzy on my own motivations, which is another way of saying I'm not sure how good of a person I am. There are legitimate reasons to want to be more widely known as a writer, like caring about the things I write about and wanting others to care about them in the way I do. There are neutral reasons, like just wanting to feel like I'm getting better at something I enjoy. This is sort of an extension of having decided to write seriously in order to be a more complete person than just a guy who worked and took care of his family. Nothing wrong with it. It isn't really a noble reason to write, because it's more about just feeling fulfilled than bringing something to others, but it's certainly not an evil reason for wanting to be more noticed for my writing.

Then there are the reasons I'm ashamed to admit exist. I want my ego stroked. I want to be admired. I want to show people they were wrong about me--not that I can really think of anyone who told me I was going to fail, so it's hard to find enemies. But spite has been a pretty good motivator for me in other areas of my life, so I try to find a way to make it work for me here. Spite-motivation comes at a cost, though: I am ashamed to admit this about myself, but envy of other writers getting the accolades I want has started to make it difficult for me to enjoy the works of other writers.

Normally, I don't worry too much that my motivations for doing something aren't 100% pure. Of course, nobody's motivations are entirely benign. We're all a mix of good and bad reasons why we do things, and to obsess over what particular blend of motivations is getting you out of bed on a particular day is to miss the point, which is to get out of bed however you need to.

But the last few weeks have made me worry about my own motivations, and wonder whether moving on to steps 7 and 8 is being withheld from me by the universe for my own good and the good of others.

So much closer than I've ever been

After the book came out in 2017, I wrote another half dozen stories. I thought they were at least as good as what went into the book, but I couldn't get any published anywhere. There were a few positive notes with the rejections, but nothing landed anywhere. I revised a few and eventually got two published at smaller journals. I should have been happy with that, especially because one of the stories was inspired by my daughter, and she really loved what I wrote. But step #7 was to get into some journal that was really hard to get into. To me, that meant a "top 50" journal, according to one of the lists I had been using for years to determine where to send stories. (This is one such list.) 

In summer 2018, I got on a roll. I wrote five stories, all of which seemed to me to be a clear step above anything I'd done before. No matter how much I account for my own bias toward my own stories, it's obvious reading them that I had some kind of breakthrough. I felt pretty good that one of them was going to get into a top journal.

The early returns seemed to justify my optimism. There weren't any acceptances right off the bat, but I did get personal notes from editors welcoming more writing. I knew these were different from the normal form rejections, because I'D GOTTEN the form rejections from these journals before. I got them from journals that'd never given me the time of day before, journals that had been represented in the "best-of" anthologies I'd been reading: Pank, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review (which I've always desperately wanted to get into because Gettysburg might be my favorite place on Earth), The Iowa Review, Michigan Quarterly, The Common, Shenandoah. Somehow, I have managed to make Glimmer Train's honor roll three times in the last year of their publication, including their last-ever new writer's contest (which I qualify for, having never been published in a journal with a circulation over 5,000). 

Every one of those "we liked it, it just wasn't quite there" responses meant I'd really taken a leap forward, but it also meant I was still short. Each one left me between ecstatic and crushed. I was grateful to each editor for letting me know that what I'd written was enough for them to take notice, but also bitter I still had work left to go. 

But no response had the dual effect this brief note I got two weeks ago did:

Dear Jacob,
Thank you for sending us "Love Hotel." We admire the way you write and regret that this story is not quite right for the magazine. We wish you the best of luck finding a home for the story, and we hope to read more of your work soon.
Sincerely,
The Editors

Doesn't sound like much, until you consider who "The Editors" are. They're the editors of the mother-humping New Yorker, a magazine ranked #1 or #2 in pretty much every "best journals" list. 

This is the part where I'm not proud of myself

With each near-miss, I felt both happiness and sadness, and the sadness was for a mix of good and bad reasons. The good reason was that I was sad something I cared about wouldn't get a chance to find a larger audience. The bad reason was vanity. When I got that response from The New Yorker and thought for a second about what would have happened if I'd been just a little bit better, just a little bit luckier, my response was completely taken over by vanity. I'd have been admired. People would have been talking about me. I'd have been relevant and important and a part of American letters. I don't know anyone particularly wishing bad things for me, but dangit if such a person were out there, I'd have sure showed him. This was my Sam Gamgee with the ring moment, except what pulled me back from the abyss wasn't plain, good hobbit sense, but the fact I didn't really possess the ring. I didn't feel good about myself.

The point of writing stories is to write something that people will read and make them want, in some way, to become a better version of themselves. There is a lot of room for a variety of meanings about what "a better version of themselves" equates to, but that's the point of stories, and really all art. If that's not it, then there is no point at all. But how can I be the right person to write such stories when their effect on me, the closer I get to achieving the goal, is to become a worse person? 

Then this note came in

One of the editors of one of the journals took the time to write a second note to me, beyond just the short "you nearly made it" response. I just got it today, while I was working on finishing up this post. It was sweet and earnest and kind. It included this line: "Concern yourself primarily with giving full life to your characters' stories, rather than obsessing about publication, and you'll likely create your best work." One conclusion I draw from this note is that the editor has taken the time to read this blog at some point in time. Hello. Thanks very much for the note. 

It's not the first time or the tenth time I've heard that advice. I've tried to convince myself of it before. It certainly has all the taste and smell of wisdom: I can't control getting published, I can only control what I write, and if I believe in what I write, that ought to be enough. If it isn't, then no amount of publication or praise ever will be enough.

But like all good advice, it's damned hard to follow. I'm not sure I even am totally in control of whether I can follow it. The same obsessiveness that drives me to care too much about publication is also what makes me write stories nearly good enough for some really excellent journals. I've always liked being graded. Having tried to write something pure and only for the joy of writing it, I still no sooner finish it than I want someone in authority to tell me if I did a good job. That's just me.

To some extent, I may give off a more dire impression about how hard I take these things than is really the case. For whatever reason, when I started this blog about five years ago, I wanted it to be a true testament to what it's like working your ass off to write good stories when nobody cares. That includes trying to give an honest account of a lot of the negative thoughts I have, because someday, some other writer is going to think the same thing, and I want this blog to be here to let that writer know that others had the same thoughts. So I need to be open about the bad thoughts, even when they make me look petty. I try to record the good things, too, but I've just had more discouraging moments than encouraging ones. That's being a writer for most people. Anyone thinking about following the path I've been down ought to know that.

They also ought to know that there is no guarantee of ultimate success. There may not even be a good reason to keep trying until the bitter end. The writing industry, much of which makes its money off the dreams of aspiring writers, wants you to keep going past the point where you ought to quit. They want you to pay another contest fee, go to another convention, but another pile of books. I just want this blog to be honest enough to suggest that might not be the best move for everyone.

I'm going to keep on going, but I make no promises that I'm going to keep on going forever. A more naturally optimistic person would have been banging away at more writing for the last six months, encouraged to see signs of nearly making a goal. I'm not that person. If I were, I wouldn't be writing stories nearly getting published in the better journals. Optimism is great for achieving things in life, but it's boring as hell to read about. The terribly pessimistic side of me is intimately linked to the part of me that writes stories from a place of authenticity. What I have to see now is whether I can still be that person and get down this next road I marked out for myself.