I begin this with no clear sense of where I’m going. I’m laying down the tracks while driving the train, so to speak.
For the last couple of years I’ve been tiptoeing into a long-neglected ambition: writing fiction. When I was younger, I had a desire to write stories. Two things conspired against me. I was lazy and undisciplined. Also, I had a way of putting things off until some magical, divinely-inspired time that never came. Young and stupid me believed that God had a plan for everyone and when I was supposed to write, He would make it happen. I never considered that the Enemy keeping from this glorious purpose might be, in fact, me. Who needs a Devil when you’re lethargic and shallow?
The last few years have brought immense changes into my life, many of which have bordered on traumatic. Much of these period has been defined by elder-care and the lessons learned from someone else’s life.
Then there is the whole death thing. It’s a tired, old story, but I eventually clawed my way into a moment of clarity and realized that I’m old enough to die at any time. Yes, if I died today or next year, it would be tragically young, but it nonetheless remains a statistically significant possibility. And I am at the age where, in the last few years, I have lost several friends and family members who had all danced roughly the same number of circles around the sun as me.
I suppose there isn’t a single correct response to this epiphany and different people react to it in their own unique ways. Me? I suddenly found some discipline. I started keeping an idiosyncratic version of a bullet journal, tracking my goals against how I was actually spending my fleeting time. Part of this practice, this new commitment to daily habits, has been me going off in search of lost time. So I’ve been writing a lot of fiction for the last year or so.
Short stories (and a draft of that long deferred novel) have been seeping out of my fingertips into the clickety clack of a keyboard with a measured regularity lately. Enough so that I’ve been submitting them to various publications. I’m very happy to say that, though perhaps not exactly proud, that I’ve had two published in less than a calendar year. I’ve also got a half-dozen or so more floating somewhere out there in the slush piles of literary journals all across this fine world.
The experience of finally writing has been gratifying, if bewildering. I really don’t know what I’m doing, you see. The only thing certain about this process is that I have been, and will continue to be, collecting massive numbers of rejections for these stories. Most have been generic form letters, though many are somewhat more personal. So far nobody has said, “we actually really like this but…” Everyone has just said “no” in one form or another. Last week, my email box notified me of two more. And as I am going through and editing this piece, I just checked for more (one is due any minute now, according to Duotrope statistics).
The other night, just as I lay me down to sleep, I received a rejection with an offer for further feedback if I wanted it. The editor did not want to hoist his opinion onto me if I didn’t want it. My curiosity is far stronger than my sense of existential dread, so I have asked him for some details when he has the time.
The whole episode has made me very curious. Who is this person? Not the editor; I mean me. Who is this person who is suddenly handling rejection in such a seemingly healthy way?
It’s very clear to me now, that the underlying source of my lazy and undisciplined youth was an old-fashioned fear of rejection. Something in the years has muted that. I say muted rather than eliminated because I would be lying if I said that rejection does not bother me now. It totally sucks, actually. I’m just saying that its caustic effects are focused now, not general.
I have a theory about this, something I’ve been talking about with my mental health professional. I suppose I’d like to run it by the general public now and see what you think.
It has to do with identity and the human desire for meaning.
I happen to be fairly persuaded by the existentialist assertion that life has no inherent, built-in, prefabricated meaning. The whole “existence precedes essence” thing seems mostly right to me.
The problem with this state of being is that it digs a hole that we try to fill with all the things we chase in life, and with all the identities we create. A major weapon we have against meaninglessness is capital “I” Identity. To claim “I am x” is to construct a shelter of meaning in a dark forest of meaninglessness. This comes at a price, thought: after one throws that shelter together, it must be defended at all costs.
To be sure, there are certain demographic realities that make some form of identity-claiming unavoidable. I am, by legal definition, an American, for example. But though this is technically an identity that one cannot just pretend doesn’t exist, I do believe it can be held onto too tightly. And the same goes for many of the technical identities we cling to.
But those demographic identities aren’t really what I’m talking about here. I’m more concerned with the invented ones, the ones based on taste and social distinction. Those things we think make us special. “I am a Marvel fan,” “I am a runner” etc… Add to these, “I am a writer.” Once we stake out a territory like that, we invite barbarian invaders from the hinterlands to storm our new castle. And many of the struggles we face in life can be traced to defending our identities. This is how you get MCU fans who can’t be satisfied that their favorite movies are literally the biggest things on the planet; no everyone has to assent to their greatness and love them too and if they don’t they are literally garbage people.
That example about being a “writer” hits me hard. It was, after all how I envisioned myself for many years, so it isn’t easy to hold on to it loosely, as 38 Special advised. And it is why rejection stings so much for the person who has adopted it as a core identity. So perhaps I gave a misleading title to a recent post here.
I think that one thing I’ve learned in the last few years is that life is too brutish and too short to be defending a makeshift lean-to of identity.
So my solution has been about framing. And it’s kind of childish in its simplicity.
Instead of claiming that I “am” something, I try to say that I “enjoy” that thing. I like horror movies, but don’t need the pressure of “being a horror fan” in my life.
For my writing life, that seems to be working. And I can’t help but thing that this is why I’ve been surprising myself with my recent displays of philosophical resiliency.
I’ve been trying to make writing a habit, with both the fiction and non-fiction I write, as well as this Substack, which has proved itself to be a kind of lifeline for me. That artificial deadline I set for myself to publish an essay each week is wonderful motivation.
I don’t have a word-count quota per se, but I do try and write 500 words each day when I can. I sometimes can’t (or more truthfully, don’t), but I feel obviously, measurably better when I do write something.
And when I finish a story. Well, let me tell you about that.
Even the stories that have been rejected so many times I’m sure they will never find a home. Finishing even those stories gives me an adrenaline rush that I can’t describe, but if you know what I mean, then you know what I mean. The act of finishing something creative, something that did not exist before I did it, something that puts some form on an abstract feeling or notion; this is a fix you really should be chasing for yourself if you can carve out the time.
I guess that what I’m saying is that the dopamine hit I get has been fairly successfully located in the doing of writing, not in being acknowledged by other people as “a writer.” I’ve been pretty good at finding meaning in doing, rather than in striving to “be” something. Consequently, the rejections haven’t been much of a blow to my self-worth.
So now that I’m at the end, let me say that I do realize that identity plays a huge role in how we understand the world and that it is never possible to completely strip all our identities away. I’m just trying to be something of a minimalist in the number of identities I acquire and accumulate. In time, the identities that start out giving us purpose and freedom, can become over-packed baggage that weighs us down.
Are there identities you would be better off abandoning?
Appreciate the hard won insights here, Danny. Not trying to be too Zen but I wonder if rejection is even the right word in the whole querying not-so-merry-go-round. Substack feels like a great way of side-stepping its inherently misplaced power-play. I think constructive feedback is a very different and most welcome beast.
Danny! As a Writer (i mean as a person who e joys witting) and a guy who studies identity, I love this so much.
For me, it’s about finding core identities that have zero relation to anything I do. Those core identities are, for myself, explicitly Christian ones that all people share.
I need to always work on throwing off my identity in credentials and accomplishment. I put way too much value on those as markets that I’m a halfway decent human. I’m working on tuning in more to my core identities and letting my life flow from the internal and not the external.