Trust the Process?
Two months. That’s how long it’s been since I received the rejection. The line that still stings went something like this: “while we loved your writing, we’ve decided we’re going to pass on your manuscript.”
Writers the world over have received this sentence, or some variation, by the hundreds. If we were paid based on the number of rejections we received, there’d be a lot more well-fed and well-paid writers living in ocean-front mansions.
But that’s not what writing is about. It’s about developing a thick skin after years and years of rejections so that when an acceptance does come along, it’s the reminder that nothing indeed comes easy. That thick skin, however, is pierced so easily every time, as though the surface of said skin is rhinoceros-like, yet underneath is a direct pathway to the heart.
Okay, so I’m being dramatic, but that’s what writers do. We peddle in the dramatic. So, when someone (an editor, agent, or otherwise) lathers you up a bit, it’s hard not to get emotionally invested. Especially when it’s something you’ve been working on for… I hate to admit how long I’ve been working on it.
The point is, I’ve been in a holding pattern going on three months unsure of what to do with my manuscript. Should I scrap the whole thing? Should I keep at it and “trust the process?” Should I quit writing all together? I didn’t think this rejection would be so profound, but I can’t deny that it wasn’t. I’ve actually lost sleep over it. I’m in that place that Dr. Seuss calls, “The Waiting Place.”
So that’s where I am creatively. We all get stuck here from time to time. For some they’re little ruts or long slumps in our work, our family, or love lives. They’re stopovers after a good punch in the gut. While they may be terrible and we may lose part of ourselves in the process, I suppose they serve a purpose: to recalibrate. No one wants these periods to last more than a minute, but sometimes they have to last small eternities. There’s often no other way around them.
◊♦◊
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash