Have You Submitted Anything?

“What are your plans over Christmas vacation?”

“Well, I really don’t have any, beyond spending the mornings writing.”

“Have you submitted anything?”

This conversation between my mother-in-law and myself took place in the kitchen Christmas Day, as I basted the honey-glazed ham I make every year. My mother-in-law is a sweetheart, always asking about my writing even though she has never read any of my work (it would not be to her taste, to put it mildly) and won’t ever read this blog. She is the type of person who is interested in anything anyone does, always curious, always open, always learning. You hear the cliched stories of the in-laws from hell, but I’ve been blessed with the opposite.

So I answered her truthfully: no, I haven’t submitted anything since last spring. Trying personal circumstances played a part (it takes time to find new places to submit to), but there are two primary reasons: lack of confidence in the work, and lack of confidence in the self. It’s a toxic mixture any writer must deal with, and for me the response to it is usually to put my head down and just keep working. You have to believe it will get better. And so I’ve done that this year, as I always do, but what I’ve been putting on paper doesn’t seem inspired to me. It doesn’t seem good enough. Worse, there are actually some good ideas in it—I just can’t seem to bring them to fruition. Which makes one feel they’ve reached the limit of their talent, and anything beyond is unattainable. Thus the toxic mixture.

In October I attended a concert by Worm Ouroboros, a band whose imagery—musical, visual and written—has always moved me. The concert kicked something loose in me, and for the next ten days I wrote every night, inspired, the nagging self-doubt voice for once silenced. It was a magical ten days, the kind of thing that shows up every so often to remind a writer why they do this in the first place. If I could bottle that feeling, that space! When that magical period ended, I had the first draft of a story that felt fresher, truer to myself than anything I’d done in a long time. There was some great writing in it.

But it’s never that simple, is it? As the story had evolved, the tone of the characters had changed greatly, and what I had in my hands was a story with tone shifts too jarring to be believable. That’s fine; it’s a first draft, and these things happen. So I worked on it over the next six weeks, rewriting and resolving the tone issue and all the other fun stuff you do when revising. Tweak after tweak after tweak. Finally this morning I realized I was too far in it and needed to step back. I’ve lost perspective as to whether it is anything worthwhile or just another piece of hacky garbage. To make it work, I had to drop many of the best passages of writing, and while you can’t be sacred about anything when revising, I fear I’ve lost the magic of it. Or am I just holding on to the memory of that first draft, the magic of the words flowing, instead of being an adult and making the damn thing work.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s fine, maybe it’s garbage. Right now I can’t tell. But the fear of losing the magic is very real, and not just so far as this story goes. I’m 44 and I’m still writing, but it’s debatable whether I’ve written anything worthwhile. In a letter to a friend recently I said “writing is 98% hard work and 2% inspiration.” That 2% is so, so sweet, allowing you to slog through the other 98%. Yet it’s hard not to feel like I’m getting worse at this somehow. I like to think I don’t hold a lot of illusions about myself; I’m not some great undiscovered talent. But I would like to see a story published someday.

So I’ll keep trying, mother-in-law. And if I ever do get one published, I’ll owe it at least in part to you, because you keep encouraging me for no other reason than you have a kind, sweet heart and want to see me achieve a dream.