I HAD TO REPOST THIS.
This just sums it up so well.
Not many will understand or be able to relate.
Well, one person obviously does.
No one cares if I write.
No one’s waiting for me to publish my
next essay. No one’s waiting for me to overcome my low self-esteem or
manage my depression and anxiety or move through my fears or stop
doubting myself or get a good night’s sleep and drink enough water and
caffeinate sufficiently to sit down and write. No one was waiting for me
to quit my day job when I did a few months ago, and stop putting off
what I most love to do and make the time in my life to do it.
I
don’t have an agent or an editor expecting the completion of my
manuscript, no publishers are wooing me with six-figure advances for a
book deal, and nothing I’ve written has ever gone viral. No one is
compulsively refreshing my website, checking for my next blog post to be
published. I don’t even have an article assignment or deadline at the
moment.
I write pieces and send them out. Sometimes I will get rejections, which are usually very gentle and non-personal—it
wasn’t right for them, and
please submit again. Most of the time though, I never hear back at all. I just send and send and send into the void.
Occasionally
something I pitch will get accepted (hooray!). But wait—when it’s
published there are stats, an abundance of metrics to show me
exactly
how little everyone cares. How few people open my newsletter, how low
my website traffic is, how small the engagement was for my latest
Twitter or Facebook post. All the data there to prove just how much no
one cares.
I’ve been writing for a long time and I’m not famous or
hugely successful or even moderately well-known. Thirteen years ago I
had my first article published—
a music profile in Interview Magazine.
I brought a copy of that issue to my chiropractor and she said, “I can
just feel it, you’re about to take off, like a rocket ship!”
I
didn’t. But I kept writing. Through running out of money multiple times
and then taking day jobs each time so I could support myself, even
though those jobs often sapped my energy and depleted my spirit. So I’d
write less, but I didn’t stop.
It feels personal—that editors
aren’t leaping to respond to my emails as soon as they arrive in their
inboxes, that millions of people aren’t clicking on my stories and
tweeting them and sharing them on Facebook.
It feels personal, but it’s not. When he received a MacArthur fellow “genius” grant last fall, Ta-Nehisi Coates said in an
interview with The Guardian,
“You can never be prepared for it, right. I’ve been doing this
basically for 20 years now, and the majority of your career you write
and nobody cares.”
It’s just what it is to be a writer—toiling away in obscurity most of the time.
So
how do you not give up, when you’re working so hard doing something you
care so deeply about, and it feels like no one else cares at all?
Have a greater purpose
Right
after college I went to acting school, and as part of the curriculum, I
had to take modern dance class. The dance teacher told us that if we
wanted to be actors, we had to have a greater purpose; we could not just
strive for our own fame or we would burn out. She suggested doing 108
sun salutations first thing every morning to connect with this higher
cause.
Vigorous early morning yoga is not my thing. But I do think
a lot about being of service, and how my writing can benefit others. I
have a strong sense of what my mission is—to heal myself and others
through my writing. Sometimes I stray from this and it slips from the
forefront of my mind, because I also crave attention and
recognition, and a not-small part of me wants to be famous. So I have to
go back again and again and again to this sense of greater purpose to
give me the strength, resilience, and hope to keep going, even when all
signs point to giving up.
Have a life
Being a
writer feels like an essential part of who I am, and often like it has
to be the most important thing in my life. I have such a pressing need
to write that I could easily spend my days, nights, and weekends doing
almost only that, and in isolation.
Writing can be incredibly
nourishing and energizing, but if I have nothing else going for me than
my writing, if all my attention is invested in getting those acceptances
and that validation from others, then the rejections hit even harder.
If I go to yoga and spend time with friends and have a feeling of
connection and community and of being “seen” in my life as well as in my
writing, then I can have some perspective when I’ve sent out a slew of
pitches and haven’t heard back about any of them, and not crumble when
an editor who was interested in publishing an article I wrote and asked
me to submit a revision has since ghosted me. Because if I have other
things that matter to me besides writing, those disappointments won’t
feel so crushing.
I don’t do this nearly enough—I frequently slip
back into being laser-focused on my writing at the expense of everything
else. But I notice that when I am connected to my life and other people
in way that is meaningful to me, my writing feels lighter and not so
weighted down by
needing to make it work.
Don’t give up, because as bad as the rejection feels, not writing feels worse
I
could give up. I could say that I’m sick of all the rejection and I
want to do something else, something where I feel valued and
appreciated. Something where there’s more of a direct correlation
between what I put in and what I get out.
But as bad as the
rejection and all the non-caring feels, not writing feels worse. I have
to tell my stories and share my experiences, or I get angry and
lethargic and depressed. Without writing, I feel powerless and like I
don’t have a voice, like my thoughts and feelings and experiences don’t
matter. I get frustrated when I’m sending out a piece that I love and it
isn’t getting accepted anywhere and I’m yearning for it to be published
so others can read it. I’d prefer if everything I wrote got accepted.
But regardless, the actual process of writing is soothing, healing, and
necessary for me to feel OK in the world. So I have to keep doing it.
Remember that somewhere, someone cares
When
I’m feeling masochistic, I’ll toggle between my TinyLetter,
Squarespace, and bitly analytics, and these stats tell me that
relatively very few people give a shit about my writing.
But then
I’ll get an email from someone who just found an article that I wrote,
maybe even years ago, telling me that it made them feel less alone or
more understood or gave them hope when they were feeling hopeless.
When
you write something, you never know who it is going to affect, or how
it could help someone who’s struggling and feeling alone, or how in a
low moment in their life, desperately searching on Google for answers,
they will come upon your words when they need them most. And despite
what our culture will have us believe—that metrics and stats matter
above all else, that the number of clicks tells the whole story—somehow,
in some calculation, impacting one human being has got to be worth more
than all the unique page views and Shares and Likes in the world.
