It’s not easy being green

Kermit the frog sang It’s Not That Easy Being Green with typical Muppet wisdom. In the song, he laments feeling too blended in and not sparkly enough. When you see other writers pass you by in the publishing world, you can identify with Kermit’s sense of ordinariness. We writers can be green too, not that we want to own up to envy and jealously. I suspect some writers have these feelings in spades. It’s hard seeing other writers being published and gaining recognition, while you’ve been slaving away on your work with hardly a nibble of interest. You want what someone else has and feel it rightly full was yours: the agent, the publishing deal, the place on a panel at a literary festival. It’s easy to slip into the sort of covetous thinking that does you no service.

The creative industries can be a tough place to make a reasonable living. Sure there are the lucky few bestselling authors, who seem to have come by it all with ease. Yet, I suspect for them, their ‘luck’ came about when they had done the work needed, when they had broken though their personal barriers of self-doubt, and harnessed their persistence and resilience, and just kept going, believing in what they had to offer, until finally they found themselves in the right place at the right time. Not seeing that background, it’s easy to think it’s always going to happen to around you rather than to you.

Some of my immediate writer group of writer friends are doing great things; being published, building a profile, being acknowledged. It would be easy to get sucked into feeling miserable that it will never happen to you. Instead, it’s useful to look at what they are doing, measuring up the effort they put into their projects, and being honest as to whether you do the same. The other traits these writers have in common, is that they are extraordinarily generous both in sharing knowledge with, and in being supportive of, other writers. They don’t have the mentality of scarcity like some writers, who choose to believe that there is a limited amount (of interest, publishing opportunities, readers) to go around. One of biggest barrier is a lack of confidence. When that escalates (as invariably it does from time-to-time) you're almost ready to bin your laptop and empty your fountain pen. Listening to writers who are open to all the lessons the industry affords, is one way to get your thinking back on track and enjoy the success of others. One day they will be enjoying yours.  

It’s not always easy to maintain this attitude but it’s worth the effort. It gives you a greater chance of ending up in the published basket. Meanwhile, if it all gets too much and you still need to be a little bit green, you can sit with Kermit and soak up Clive James’s wonderful poem The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered.  Read it. You will be glad. 

Pardon my big but

All creative artists have to deal with rejection. It’s the reality of being in a competitive field where technology and globalisation are changing the game. When your work is out there waiting to find its home, and it comes back with a ‘thanks, but no thanks’, the first reaction is that it’s a rejection of you. They don't like me! ‘They’ don't even know you. What they have said ‘No’ to is a particular piece of work at a particular point in time. Does this mean the work is terrible? Possibly, but you submitted the piece when it was a good as you could get it, didn't you? Let’s assume you took care of all the basics (worked on the piece to perfection, formatted it to industry standard, complied with all submission guidelines). Once that's out of the way, there are lots of reasons that your work is pushed back. The response may be because they have just published a similar piece, maybe they have too many pieces in that genre. Sometimes, it’s about right time, right place. Unfortunately, even when you understand the logic of it, the emotion remains. Disappointment is not something you ever get used to. That's okay. You wouldn’t have an artist’s sensibilities if it didn’t sting a little. You are allowed to feel a tad sorry for yourself, but not for long.  

One of the things we tell writing students is this: persistent will win out over talent in the long run. We see many talented budding writers who give up when success doesn’t come as fast as they want. There are others whose talent may not be as great, but who dedicate themselves to improving their craft and muster the courage to send their work out, repeatedly, despite the many ‘thanks, but…’ responses they receive. 

In my early days, I received a piece of great advice from an established writer when I chewed her ear about my growing pile of rejections and feeling like a failure. She said, “Lucia, just do the work.” It’s as simple as that. Focus on doing your best writing, give it wings and let it go out in the world. Accept that not everything you write will be published. Let it come back to you with its lessons. Whatever it teaches you will help you build your ‘overnight success’—the background preparation that no one sees before it all starts to fall into place. 

You have to believe in your work before anyone else can. That might sound trite, but the truth is that the basis of believing in yourself involves exactly what my writer friend said: continuing to do the work, honing it, giving it opportunities to be accepted and not investing in rejections; in fact, despite them, trying again. Yes, you’ll bomb out, possibly many times—many ultimately successful writers have—don’t let that stop you. Every piece you write has its home, be it published and on a bookshelf or in your bottom drawer. So next time someone gives you a great big ‘but’, get off yours and have another go. No buts about it.