I didn’t write yesterday, because I was busy with getting set up for the beginning of the school year. The hard part’s done — all online class presence is sorted out and in order with due dates accurate, the syllabus pristine, and all that.
I’m also in the middle of a miserable summer cold that’s been hanging on, so I’m a bit dopey.
I confess that I haven’t written in a while. A week at least, what with the classes and the queries and the cold and the like … I haven’t written more than a half hour to finish a story. I will try to write today, because writing. Even if I only write a couple paragraphs, I need to write.
I need to remind myself that I’m a writer.
The Changing Seasons of the Academic Calendar
It’s August first, and I can feel the season change even though it’s warm outside. That’s because I base my seasons on the academic calendar, and there are only three seasons: fall semester, spring semester, and summer.
I’m approaching the end of summer right now, so I’m beginning to prepare for fall semester, updating my online classwork, getting a new work computer, finishing up my internships, cleaning up and rearranging my office (already done!), setting up my calendar … the rhythm of life changes.
Fall semester is the beginning of my calendar, as it brings new things: A shiny new school year, new students, beginning meetings (ok, not everything about the new school year is wonderful). It also embraces football (American) tailgates, dressing up for Halloween, the feast of Thanksgiving, the Christmas season and its associated rituals on a college campus.
Spring semester starts with winter — the Christmas snow is now slushy and dirty, the beginning of the semester meetings seem like same old same old, and Valentine’s Day as a holiday just doesn’t measure up to Christmas. But then come Spring, and the unexpected: the Northwest Yeti comes out of hiding, there’s a big cow statue in front of the Hy-Vee grocery store, art installations spring up like mushrooms, and students plunge into the chilly waters of Colden Pond for charity.
Then we come back to summer, where things slow down, and faculty spend their summers teaching abroad or taking on interns or taking summer classes or teaching short, intensive summer classes. And going on vacation. My summer has been spent supervising interns, taking a class for my certification in Disaster Mental Health, doing moulage (simulating physical injury and illness for training purposes), and taking a mini-vacation. And writing.
So that is my year, and the signs of a seasonal change keep popping up: the announcement of beginning of semester meetings, the back-to-school sales, discussions of how well our football team may do this year (we have one of the best Division II teams in the nation, which for those of you in other countries would be like a lower division soccer league), and emails from students trickling in.
It should be a good year.
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Yesterday was a tough day — two rejections (one agent, one submission of a short story). I don’t feel so bad about the short story rejection, because I think my choice of genre (fantasy) might keep my work from being accepted by some markets. And there’s a lot of competition.
I need to toughen up about agent rejections.
I truly believe at this point that I’m getting rejections because of something as simple as fashion, and I will believe that until someone says otherwise. I’m willing to improve, but I’ve improved as much as dev editors, beta readers, publishing coaches, and my own judgment have allowed me to.
Please wish me luck. I’m serious.
What if everyone rejects me?
So I have twenty-six queries out right now. No, twenty-five, because I got a same-day rejection yesterday — same day service! I’m going to stop querying for a while (I have close to 45 left to send) to see what happens with this.
I have to remind myself that there are several reasons why queries get rejected that have nothing to do with the quality of my book:
- The topic of my book isn’t “hot” right now
- The agent only has one slot left in their list and they know exactly what they want to put in it and it’s not my book
- My query didn’t “speak” to them or they didn’t “feel” it (literal rejections I’ve gotten)
- The agent had a bad day (I’m not kidding)
- There’s a lot, a LOT more queries coming in than there are books being sold in traditional publishing
So I’m left with that question, always: What do I do if I get 25 more rejections?
I send the rest.
And if I don’t get an agent then, I tweak things and try again. And remind myself that the agents are rejecting my query, not me.
Revving the treadmill engine
I guess I got tired of that idyllic end of summer crap, because I’ve sent twenty queries over the past couple of days.
That’s twenty chances for rejection, I know. That’s also twenty chances for requests for manuscripts. That’s twenty chances for someone to share my query with another agent in the agency. Twenty more agents who know my name.
No, I’m not always as optimistic as I sound. It’s just that my hedonic treadmill, the constant state of moving up and down from our hedonic set point , really gets revving up when presented with possibilities.
So I have to get more queries out there to rev my treadmill engine, and so I’ll be writing those up until I work New York Hope as moulage crew and then start my semester.
In the meantime, I dream of someday having a book release party. Locally, where I’m with the people I know. Cake and coffee and punch. What quirky things do you think should happen at a book party? Humor me.
Making things happen
Yesterday, I sent a few queries out for Archetype. I was going to wait, but I felt like it was time. I like having queries out, because it makes me feel like something good could happen.
The strange thing is that I’m not feeling that burning feeling to get something published lately. Maybe because I have gotten published (or will be anyhow) — my short essay in A3. Or because I’m feeling the season slip into autumn and classes. Or because I’m used to getting rejections. Or because my feelings have nothing to do with how well-received my letter is if I wrote my letter well.
I am really motivated to send out queries these last couple days. I’m trying to pace myself, though, because I’m always afraid I will become manic.
The Hedonic set point
So, yesterday’s introspection left me at an interesting place. I’m considering a concept I teach in positive psychology called the hedonic set point. The concept is backed by research, so it’s not new age hoo-ha.
The theory goes like this: whenever something good happens to us, we feel great for a while, but then we get used to that feeling and it fades until we’re back at our set point. When something bad happens to us, we feel bad for a while, but then we start feeling less bad and then it fades until we get back to our set point.
So, if I get rejected, and I don’t beat myself up over it, I will feel better eventually. If I beat myself up over it, I generate bad feelings and will feel bad for longer. But I will find myself once again at the set point.
Conversely, if I get accepted (for my manuscript or by an agent), I will feel great for a while, and may try to make the feeling last longer by celebrating and telling all my friends, but I will eventually fall back to the set point.
In other words, it’s folly to look at happy-making moments in order to become happy. In a lifespan, major achievements don’t reset our hedonic set point.
What does reset our set point higher?
- Practicing gratitude
- Significant relationships (friendship, family, intimate)
- Building self esteem = success/hopes and expectations
- Giving back to community
- Regular meditation
So, given that, there is one thing about getting published that could permanently put my set point higher and that is building self-esteem. I get that.
Building self-esteem can be done in two ways: More success and modest hopes and expectations.* I’m working on it.
* My fantasy of getting published is pretty modest. In it, I have to find an entertainment lawyer, look over a contract, argue the contract, go through all those intermediate steps that might take a year or four, have a modestly attended book party, travel a few places on my money, and make less than $40k. None of my friends will be particularly excited. My university will not count it as academic achievement. I’m okay with this.
Enough
No signs of outward success will be enough. I think every writer falls into it:
- We want an agent
- Then we want a publisher
- Then we wish we’d gotten a better publisher
- People who self-publish wish they’d gone traditional
- People published with traditional publishers wish they’d sold more copies
On the other hand, it’s human nature to want to improve, and how can we tell we’ve improved? By external validation. We recognize that “I think it’s great” has its limitations as proof of success. We want experts to say we’ve improved.
I know I’m in this “not good enough” cycle. I have gotten compliments on my writing. I got runner-up in one publisher’s writing contest and first place in a small journal’s essay contest. And that’s within less than two months of sending my short stuff out. I’ve gotten many more rejections, and for once I’m not counting the rejections, so that’s progress. But I’m starting to belittle what I’ve gotten as “not enough”.
I think the key is to not belittle those successes as “not enough”, but to push forward. And this includes doing anything I can do to get better. Maybe I could count getting through dev edits, peer critiques, and beta readers as success.
PS: I just discovered how to do emojis on 😁😂💖Windows!
Days Pass Slowly
One day feels much like another lately; the heat keeps me from doing much outside and nothing’s going on inside. I’m waiting to hear from an agent, a publisher, and a journal, and that status doesn’t seem like it will ever change. I don’t feel very inspired or very optimistic, so I feel little drive to write or revise.
Times like these, I try to cling onto the belief that I’m a writer. I dream of being published, at least in part because I fantasize about being able to say “Hey, I’m a published author!” The likely reaction from people will be an anticlimactic, “That’s nice.” But it’s a little kid fantasy, an “I’ll show you!” Not very impressive.
Maybe this lapse in writing is good for me, although it does feel like an eroding of my identity. (Why my identity as a professor is not enough puzzles me, but there it is.)
So I wait for something to happen.
Summer’s End
My summer’s winding down. This might be the reason I feel so lazy right now, knowing that in less than a month I will be back to work.
I work as an associate professor at Northwest Missouri State University. I don’t know how professors are regarded in Europe (where some of my more regular readers reside), but in the US they’re widely regarded as suspicious characters who subject their students to arcane knowledge such as how to think critically and use unbiased data to draw conclusions from.
I have one last hurrah before I go back to work (which has the added bonus of keeping me out of beginning of semester meetings) — my annual gig at New York Hope moulaging. This also includes train travel with a sleeper car and hanging out to write in the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago’s Union Station (waiting for my connector train).
But I have a couple weeks before then, working on classes before the semester starts and writing (I need motivation!) and resting before things get crazy.
Extended Metaphor
When I write the first draft of a story, I feel like I’m in the middle of a budding romance. I fall in love with the characters and I want to see what happens to them. The revelation of the story surprises and delights me.
And then there’s editing. I re-read and find all my characters’ flaws showing in the unfiltered morning light. I find holes in their stories, having heard them so many times.
But like any good relationship, my job is to look into the flaws and the errors and the mess and find the truth, the uniqueness of their story. But to do this well, I have to remember that theirs is the same story I fell in love with.
Words Like Me 