Baseball and Champagne

Garrison Keillor said when you’re feeling crappy because you sent your work out into the world and it was rejected, you ought to think about writing like baseball: Playing is way more satisfying than the outcome, and to play is to accept that sometimes you’ll lose the game.

A totally cliché analogy that won’t make anyone feel better, but true. Luckily, my motivation to write is my love for writing and my desire to get better. To me, that's payoff enough to continue, day-to-day, and getting a book published is definitely cause champagne and hoopla. I volunteered at Tin House for a while, and I’ve seen the stacks of unsolicited manuscripts. The acceptance rate for this industry is unfortunate, but rather out of my hands.

There’s something really important, though, about sending work out the door regardless if its likely fate. I agree with a writing prof who said that when you give the proverbial carrier pigeon your envelope, now it’s the pigeon’s problem. I have permission to let it go.

My struggle isn’t so much with outside response as internal urges to keep changing my work. I’ll make myself nuts if I don’t just stop sometimes. Declaring something finished and getting it out into the world feels really healthy, as though I accept any imperfections it may still have. Releasing it frees me up somehow--there’s a sense of flow, as if sending one thing away clears my space for a new work to start to grow. And… I know I can always go back later and change it if I can’t resist.