New Year’s was, for a long time, one of my favorite holidays. Not so much for the debauchery and dropping balls as for the imagery of starting over. Every January 1st was that proverbial blank sheet of paper, a promise that, going forward, anything was possible. And as someone who spent more than his fair share of Christmases in the hospital, who struggled almost annually with then-undiagnosed depression, a promise like that had real weight.
The last few years, however, haven’t brought anything close to that same kind of joy. That same kind of anticipation and boundless expectation. I don’t want to say the new year feels like a threat or anything now, but it’s definitely lost the magic. Part of that is, obviously, because of the ongoing pandemic, the resurgent belief that someone like me is acceptable collateral damage in the service of “getting back to normal.” Part of it is because I’m happily married and, despite the immunosuppression, mostly healthy. I don’t have bad relationships or bad exacerbations that I’m trying to forget, to avoid in the future.
The biggest factor, by far, though, is that I’ve been making the same resolution for half a decade now at least: to land an agent and get traditionally published. Every year I promise myself that this is the year, the year I’ll make it happen, the year that I’ll find a way to manifest all of my publishing dreams – and, every year, I’m proved wrong. Every year, I fail. I make a promise to myself and feel terrible when I can’t keep it.
Except, here’s the rub: literally nothing about publishing is up to me.
Perhaps you’ve heard the philosophy of a famous Muppet: “Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.” It’s a saying and an ethos that lots of us, myself included, have internalized over the years. Because, like it or not, whether we love Star Wars or hate it, or have, somehow, never heard of it, “do or do not” nonetheless permeates our collective societal beliefs – and it’s also very much the core conceit of American exceptionalism.
The notion of “do or do not” takes a ever-changing world of greys – a ebbing energy field of all living things, if you will – and creates a binary that cedes the burden of failure onto the do not-er. If you want something, then you deserve that thing. And if you don’t get said something, well, it’s because you didn’t want it hard enough. Didn’t do enough. It’s an incredibly myopic and dangerous view of the world. And, also, just plain wrong.
Because how much of your life, really and truthfully, is up to you?
I’ve done everything right – eating, exercising, etcetera – and this year I was still diagnosed with cystic fibrosis-related diabetes. I took all my meds, went to all my appointments, and I still ended up with bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome – permanent scarring on my lungs. And it goes well beyond my admittedly fraught health: a person can follow every traffic law, always signal and look both ways, and still get hit by a car. A salesman can post record numbers, but their company can still get bought out and they can still get fired. Someone could also, presumably, just find a winning lottery ticket laying on the sidewalk, too, I guess. That last one’s a lot more theoretical, I’ll admit, but, statistically, it can’t all be bad news, right? Like, that’s just math.
But, back to writing. Writing as a profession, getting published – nevermind actual sales and success – is absolutely not up to the writer. Luck plays a much larger part in the process than a lot of us are willing to admit. The right story needs to land in front of the right person on the right day at the right time, after they’ve had exactly the right amount of coffee, and only when the stars are in exactly the right position. Every rejection email I’ve ever received has basically said as much. Editors and agents and authors repeat the thought so much, in blogs or on Twitter, that it feels trite.
But it’s still true. And, if I’m any evidence, it’s something some writers still refuse to learn, decades after their first sale.
There are a lot of quotes about hope that I’ve been fond of over the years. There’s this one from The Shawshank Redemption: “Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.” And this one from Community: “Hope is pouting in advance. Hope is faith’s richer, bitchier sister. Hope is the deformed, attic-bound incest-monster offspring of entitlement and fear.” Maybe you’re seeing a pattern. As someone with, let’s call it objectively terrible luck, I’ve always found this kind of nihilism comforting.
I’m realizing now, though, that “hope is dangerous” really isn’t any more helpful than “do or do not.” And between the two, it’s really no wonder that I’ve considered giving up writing at least three times in the past year. When the maxims you keep returning to over and over again amount to “you suck and it’s your fault so give up,” well, you’re pretty much screwed from the start.
This is a very long-winded way of saying that I’m wrong – probably about a lot of things – I mean, I am a white guy – but right now I’m talking about writing and publishing specifically. A story or novel you’ve written not being literally the greatest thing in the world to another person isn’t your fault. It’s no one’s fault. It’s not even a fault. My wife and I disagree about books all the time, and you know what happens then? We forget about them. (The disagreements, I mean, not the books.) So why am I getting so bent out of shape when some stranger doesn’t feel the same about something I like?
I’m getting tired and I can feel myself losing the thread here a little, so let’s conclude this sumbitch, all right? When it comes to publishing, you can and should do your best, yes, dot your i’s and cross your t’s and make sure your manuscript is polished to the best of your abilities – but everything else is up to someone who is not you. The do not of a writer’s success happens well after the writing is actually written.
As a writer, then, all you can actually do is try.
Because trying is hope. And hope, despite all the pithy quotes above, is something absolutely worthwhile. Hope is all we really have, and the only thing we can even pretend to control. Yoda might not be a fan, but I’ve heard they’ve built entire rebellions out of it. And, y’know, billion-dollar movie franchises.