The other night we watched Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work (and by “we watched,” I mean, I watched while Adam fell asleep on the couch. I admire Joan Rivers a lot. It’s easy to joke about the plastic surgery and the QVC stuff she does, but she really has—to quote Michelle Bachmann—a lot of “choots-pa.” She has done amazing things with her life. But what stuck out at me most about the documentary is how, at 75, she still fears being judged. She’s still completely insecure. She put on a play in London to a standing ovation. Yet the reporters were lukewarm on it, so she refused to put the play on in New York for fear of what the critics would say.
That’s the thing with any creative field. And I don’t think I realized it until recently. An entire hierarchy exists in which, if you can just get to the next point, everything will be okay. But the problem is, that next point doesn’t exist. There’s always the point after.
Once upon a time, I was a lonely little writer sitting in my illegal first floor apartment on 10th Street in the East Village of New York City. I had a box of a computer with the black screen and a copy of WordStar. I worked as an editorial assistant for a now defunct book packaging company, and while during the day I churned out book proposals for work, at night I spent every free hour that wasn’t drinking, doing freelance proofreading (because at my peak in this company, I earned $16,000, which even in 1990, wasn’t enough to live on in NYC) and working on “my writing.” “My writing” was this ambiguous thing in those days, scrawls that filled notebooks and half pages of WordStar files. When I was feeling brave enough, I’d print them out and bring them to a writing group, filled with folks like myself—overeducated, underpaid, young New Yorkers who longed for a more literary era. Personally, I fancied myself a Dorothy Parker.
Each writing group was fraught as we gently tried to help each other improve. Sitting there silently as others judged your writing was a challenge. But it was a necessary evil as three years later I decided I wanted to do something with “my writing” and I applied to MFA programs.
Talk about brutal. I knew that once I got into a program, everything would be okay. I’d be validated about my writing and I’d begin a successful career. Never mind the rejection notices I received. I had pretty much despaired, planning on skipping out of NYC, finding a place to wait tables somewhere out West, and just write, when I came home late one night, half drunk, from a friend’s show at Sin-e on St. Mark’s. I actually remember the night pretty well, because there was another guy sitting there, writing, while the band was playing and he was wearing headphones, listening to something else, which I thought was pretty rude. I confronted him on it, because that’s the kind of thing I do. He claimed to be a musician and not into my friend’s music, and I thought he was an ass, and continued to think he was an ass, even though it turned out he was a famous ass and then a tragic one when he died a few years later.
But, as usual, I digress. The point is, I came home that night, opened my mail box, and cried when I saw the thin letter from the University of Washington. In the hallway, I started just sobbing. I really wanted to go to the University of Washington. I was going to put the envelope on the table to deal with the next morning, but didn’t want to wake to misery, so I opened it, thinking “It’s odd that they’re pleased to reject me,” taking a full five minutes to realize that, thin or not, it was an acceptance.
And so my life was made. I was set! Until I had to produce, three pieces a trimester, to be—not gently—ripped apart by my peers, constantly worried that I was the fraud, that I was the one who didn’t belong. Trying to keep up, trying to produce work. Trying to complete my thesis. And, finally, so I did.
And so my life was made. I was set! Well, until I started trying to get published. Once a literary journal had accepted me, I’d be validated about my writing and have a successful career.
And the journals have come. Very slowly. Painfully slowly. Dribbles here and there amidst the multitude of rejections. I save my rejections in a folder, hold onto them for the day I can say, “See! I told you I could write!” But it turns out publishing in journals isn’t enough.
I had to write the novel. And I did. Four of them actually (if you count my grad school thesis). But finally I wrote the one I thought would work. It passed the muster of my writing group. But I needed an agent. So I put myself out there again. I queried and hoped and revised and because once I got an agent, I’d be validated about my writing and have that successful career. And it happened. I got my agent. My wonderful agent who put my novel through the wringer to make it not just a good novel, but what I hope is a great novel. So I’m there. I’m validated. I’m done.
Except, of course, I’m not. Because, after watching Joan Rivers tonight, it’s been hammered in what should have been so obvious to begin with. If you choose a career like writing, there is no validation, there is no content with a successful career. Because when you’re writing, you’re always auditioning.
Now, I sit and wait for my agent to submit the novel to editors who will then judge my writing. And in the meantime, I submit my novel to writers whom I admire to see if they will blurb my book, and I wait, anxiously, for them to judge me. And—if—an editor makes an offer on my book, I’ll wait to hear what readers, what critics have to say. And then there will be the pressure of the next book, where it starts (almost) all over.
How many times have you picked up a published book and thought, “Eh? Didn’t love it.” And there are even times you pick one up and say, “This was terrible!” Not everyone will love every book. I have to remind myself of that. Not everyone will love my novel.
I’m not going to spout platitudes about how simply writing is validation. It’s not. Simply writing is simply writing. I guess the key is to give up looking for that validation, although, let’s face it: That’s not human nature.
A story for you: My grandmother was an incredibly well read woman. We traded books fairly frequently. She was also a very harsh woman, a woman who rarely had a kind word to say to anyone’s face. I’m not sure why I did it, but shortly before she died, I let her read one of my novels (not the one that’s being shopped around; one that I keep in my bottom drawer). She read it. She called me. She told me she was proud of me for writing a novel, she didn’t know how I did it with kids and working and keeping my home, and it was marvelous that I had done it. She was so impressed. And, then, she started the critique. And, oh what a critique it was. I don’t even remember half of it. Except for one part. “One of the problems with the main character is all she does is get drunk and get laid. That’s it! She needs to be a more three-dimensional character. There has to be more to her than drinking and sex.” Valid point. And then she said it. The words that shall live in my heart forever. “She’s you, right? Your main character is based on you.”
You can’t escape being judged. Sometimes not even by your own grandmother. But learning to live with the judgements is easier than not being a writer. So go ahead. Judge away.
Wow, LOVED this post!! Validation isn’t going to come any time soon for me, so I just keep praying every single night for the confidence to continue with my book. I’m in the process of editing, and I keep having these what-the-hell-was-I-thinking moments as I read through my ms. Of course, this starts a chair reaction of self-loathing, and before you know it, I’m thinking my writing is so bad, people MUST be laughing behind my back. Ugh!
Posts like these help remind me that I’m not the only one who feels this way. We all just want someone (a non-friend) to tell us we’re “good.”
Thanks for sharing! :o)
Ditto for the visual arts…..you just described my life.
Fantastic post! And so true. I have developed a pretty good poker face for hiding my sadness when people don’t love everything I do, but it’s just a poker face. Maybe by the time I’m 75 like Joan I’ll actually have a thick skin, LOL. Thanks for writing this.
Hey, Angela! I think you’re “good!” 🙂 And welcome Mary Kate. And if you’re like Joan, at 75 you’ll have very *thin* skin from it being pulled and tugged from all that plastic surgery. 🙂