It’s Labor Day Monday here at The Writing Barn. For those of you lucky enough to have the day off, and for those of you who are back at work looking for a well needed distraction, check out young adult author Lindsey Lane’s Rejecting Rejection Post. This one will definitely give you that extra push of perseverance needed to get through the rest of the week.
Perseverance Furthers
by: Lindsey Lane
When I was seventeen, my boyfriend gave me a copy of the Wilhelm & Baynes translation of the I Ching. I loved this gift. I loved thinking of the questions I wanted to ask, throwing the coins, and finding my hexagram. Truth was, my questions were a bit simplistic—‘Should I date so and so?’ and ‘Should I write?’ were two of my favorites—and I had a hard time ascribing the ancient wisdom to this kind of inquiry.
Still, the answer I most remember getting was “Perseverance furthers.” As a seventeen year old, I interpreted these words as a yes and carried on in whatever direction I was asking about it. Again, a bit simplistic, I know, but the path must begin somewhere. Beginning is important. In our star making culture, the importance of beginnings gets missed as somehow insignificant.
With each step down my path of writing, first in playwriting and then in journalism and now in children’s and young adult literature, I changed each time I came to the blank page. My perspective grew. My skills matured. As my perseverance deepened, my craft changed.
So did the world around me. As I deepened my commitment to craft and career, I began to shift the world around me. Bit by bit, I built a community of writers and readers: Writers who became my mentors and colleagues and readers who become my supporters and fans.
Sometime during my years as a playwright, I found this quote from Goethe:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.
It is this magic within the act of perseverance, which has kept me going in the face of rejection. Besides, rejection isn’t really rejection. As many have said so eloquently in this series, rejection is a push to do better, look again, take time, sift and reflect. Rejection is but one step along the way of writing the best manuscript possible.
When I had my first play produced many years ago. I remember saying to the director on opening night, “This is as much as I know right now.” I knew that at the end of the run, I would see holes and ways to fix them. But that would be knowledge for the next manuscript.
Was the play a failure? Absolutely not. Thankfully, reviewers were kind but more importantly, that play led to the next step and the next and the next. I persevered and that perseverance furthered both my craft and me as a human being.
In a very real way, rejection asks you to recommit to your vision. Not just the vision you have for the manuscript but for yourself as a writer. A rejection forces
you to step back and look at the work and ask, “What story am I trying to tell and how can I tell it in the best way possible?” Rejection also asks you to look at the life you are choosing and say, “Do I love writing enough to persevere through the revisions and reviews and beginning over and over?”
Fortunately, I do. As much as I love hearing praise for my work, I love hearing a critique that sharpens my wits as a writer. I love reading a book, which takes
such permission with craft, it allows me to go further. I love returning to a manuscript and seeing the next step, and the next, and next.
Yes, I do have moments of despair. But remember how I said my commitment and perseverance shifted the world around me? I now have a host of writing friends to call during those moments. And I do.
Two years ago, I called Kiko Garcia, a pal from my journalism days, who had decided to go back to school to become a midwife and is now writing a memoir about starting a midwifery practice in rural Pennsylvania. (Talk about starting over!) I was sitting at my desk feeling like a failure. I didn’t have an agent. I wasn’t anywhere close to getting published. I worried that my Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA achievement was all for naught. I filled the fiber optics with my angst.
When I was done, she said, “Success goes to the person who gets up one more time.”
“What?”
“You aren’t going to succeed if you don’t get up again.”
A year later, I became a client of the Erin Murphy Literary Agency. Two months after that, my novel EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN was acquired by Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers and will be published in September 16, 2014.
I got up one more time. I persevered. I am further because of that perseverance.
Lindsey Lane read one book over and over again as a kid: BLACK BEAUTY. “It told the truth about love and cruelty: that both of them live in our hearts every day. That book, more than any other, inspired me to be a writer. I wanted to write that kind of truth.” To that end, Lindsey graduated from Hampshire College with a BA in Theatre Arts-Playwriting and moved to Austin where she started writing plays like the award winning THE MIRACLE OF WASHING DISHES. Later, she worked at the Austin Chronicle and the Austin American Statesman where she interviewed death row inmates, cops and wayward millionaires. When she wasn’t writing, she trained as a boxer and promoted the first all women’s boxing event to raise money for Austin Rape Crisis Center. In 2003, Clarion published her picture book SNUGGLE MOUNTAIN, named Best Children’s Book of 2004 by Bank Street College of Education. Later, PicPocket Books published SNUGGLE MOUNTAIN as an app. Lindsey received an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2010. Literary agent Erin Murphy sold her debut YA novel EVIDENCE OF THINGS UNSEEN to Joy Peskin of Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers to be released September 2014.
Good post. Love the Goethe quote. I know my life has certainly changed once I became committed to writing… as another person–attributed to David Lloyd George–said: “You can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.” Continue the good work you do! Hugs, S.