Fifty. Five-0. Fiddy. Half-Century. Five Decades. Old.
Actually, one thing I can declare with the certainty of a man undeniably ensconced in middle-age is that, in many significant ways, I feel younger than I did at 25. I well recall that particular birthday was difficult, not for any age-related reason but rather the inexplicable weight of a world I was not entirely comfortable inhabiting. A world that, as an adult, and one way past the age it made sense to have no idea what to do and how to go about doing it, I was navigating not nearly as well as when I made my initial, embarrassing attempts driving stick shift (a memory that alone indicates I was alive in an altogether different era. Also, KA FISH, RIP).
I knew enough to know I wanted to be a writer but old enough to not dare call myself one, and wise enough to already understand aspiring to being a writer meant there was not even the slightest possibility I could avoid getting a day job.
And therein lay the rub.
Something was wrong with me. I’d applied to the appropriate colleges and one of them accepted me. I’d applied to the appropriate graduate schools and one of them accepted me. I decided not to apply to any PhD programs (it didn’t seem appropriate) and so none of them accepted me. The unreal world of academia still beckoned; the unreasonable world of reality awaited. Neither seemed particularly appealing so I was paralyzed: only an overfed American, like me, could understand there were options aplenty, and still find none of them enticing. And then a funny thing happened. I got a job. Like most work, it’s nice if you can get it. Like all work, it’s nice when it doesn’t involve physical labor, being outdoors, or doing much of anything that could, with any accuracy, be described as work.
And so, I worked, I paid the bills, and I began writing with only one real expectation: that I’d get better as I went along, and the only thing worse than complete failure was not making the attempt at all. Like many sensitive, ardent, and wide-eyed wannabes, I could explain precisely what I wanted to be, and had not the first idea how to do it. Already, though, I was beginning to accept, however reluctantly, that the life I wanted to live (the things I wanted to do; the words I wanted to write) would involve nothing certain with one distressing exception: a ceaseless stream of rejection.
As I got older and wiser, I figured out that the life of uncertainty and rejection was the typical and expected reality even for people who could and did call themselves writers, e.g., the successful ones. This is way too depressing to understand, much less accept, at 25, so one usually makes peace with this once they’re in too deep to easily turn around, and—if they’ve been remotely diligent, faithful, and fortunate—it’s too late because they’ve had a taste (however tiny, however fleeting) of how indescribable it feels to do this thing called writing at a high level.
This level, incidentally, does not necessarily involve or depend upon publication, but rather the exceedingly rare instances when the writer writes something that even they can’t quite explain or understand, something that can stand in the same stadium with real writers, albeit way up in the nose-bleed seats with obscured view and out of reach from the vendors selling shitty overpriced beer that would, the second a sip touched your lips, be not unlike King Arthur tilting the chalice into his parched lips, and understanding he was immortal.
Somewhere along the line, you understand there’s not going to be a definitive paradigm shift, never an unequivocal moment when, at long last, you have arrived, a writer in full. You realize the life of a writer (like life itself) is a continuum, a series of firsts, next, practice, and purposeful repetition. Looking back, with the wizened eyes of perspective, it’s useful to trace the path of firsts and see the pattern emerge, such as it is.
Let’s talk about the first.
There’s the first story I wrote. (Original story: fifth grade; vaguely plagiarized ones where, looking back and with apologies to Edgar Allan Poe, imitation was the sincerest form of flattery: third and fourth grades.)
There’s the first “adult” book I read. (Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, fourth grade. Huge mistake. Having seen the movies and read some comic book treatments, I thought I was ready for the real thing. It took me more than halfway through to understand Frankenstein was not, in fact, the monster.)
There’s the first success. (Being asked to compose and recite an original poem for an eighth-grade student assembly.)
There’s the first readership. (A series of features I wrote for my high school newspaper. For a teenager, a printed byline is as close to the big-time as it got, at least in the old-school era before social media and blogs.)
There’s the first publication. (A poem in my college literary magazine.)
There’s the first “important” publication. (A short story in another, better-known literary magazine.)
There’s the first in a series of unfortunate events. (Also known as writing workshops, wherein the cocky writer’s work gets, well, workshopped. Hilarity does not often ensue.)
There’s the first in a longer series of ceaseless rejection. (No comment necessary.)
There’s the first short story I knew would make me famous. (It’s still unpublished.)
There’s the first attempt at a novel. (Also unpublished. Fortunately, for all involved.)
There’s the subsequent, earnest attempt at a first novel. (Still a work-in-progress. Sort of.)
Nothing especially unique or noteworthy, right? All of these events or experiences were stepping stones most, if not all, writers will recognize and relate to. There is an evolution comprised of myriad firsts (and lasts), but what separates all but the most successful and/or lucky authors is what happens after the familiar epiphanies of the apprentice have occurred and it gets to the eventual, inevitable matter of perseverance.
The “first” that was, if not unique, for me the most formative and indelible, involved rejection and resolve.
Let me tell you a story: a famous writer saw a first chapter of this aforementioned novel. Famous writer picks up phone (people still used phones in those days) and tells unknown writer that he loves the material and wants his agent to look at it. Agent receives chapter, loves it too, and asks to see entire manuscript on an exclusive basis. Unknown writer thinks: this is it, the big break, the moment of truth, and other clichés. An entire summer passes, which is unfortunate. It happens to be the same summer unknown writer’s mother—who has been battling cancer for five years—begins to lose her final battle. By the time unknown writer’s mother passes away, the novel, the agent and the famous writer are about the farthest things from his mind. On the day of mother’s funeral, unknown writer makes the ill-advised decision to check his email before leaving the house. He sees the overdue email from agent. Something tells him not to open it, but of course he has to; according to logic and everything right in the world, not to mention the imperative of Cliché, this is the perfect time to see he’s about to be represented and eventually published, and this is the miracle he’ll employ to overcome his grief, and he’ll dedicate this book to his mother, without whom he could never have written it, or written anything.
Naturally, the email is, in fact, a rather terse (but apologetic) rejection.
And this unknown writer, in spite of himself, looks past the computer, looks beyond his disbelief, and looks out to whomever or whatever may be listening (or orchestrating this test of faith) and can’t quite believe hearing the words, in a voice that sounds a lot like his: “Is that all you got?”
No, this is not going to be the final, unkindest cut, the sign that failure is inevitable, the signal that it’s better to move on to other things, the message that it’s not meant to be. I’m not doing this, he thinks, because I want to, or that I hope to prove anything, or become famous (he has put away childish things). I’m doing this, he knows, because he doesn’t know what else he could possibly do with himself. He does it, he finally understands, because there’s nothing else he could imagine himself doing. And that the only failure is to stop. To be afraid, to give up.
It wasn’t the first rejection, obviously, and while it may be the biggest, it wasn’t the last. In addition to death and taxes, writers recognize at some point, however resignedly, that rejection will always be on offer, for free, forever.
And ultimately it mattered only in the sense that it didn’t matter. Or, it mattered a great deal in the sense that it was not enough to dissuade or discourage him from stumbling down a path he made up as he went along; that revealed itself only when he looked back on another piece of writing and thought: Good thing I didn’t stop.
This was the most important first, the first day of the rest of my life.
And that was almost two full decades ago. I’ve since written hundreds and hundreds of thousands of words (some of which added up to a memoir, a novel, two collections of published non-fiction, a bunch of short fiction and poetry, and many, many drafts). There’s the work I hope will pass from the purgatory of unread to out of my hands, and the stuff that’s better left in the Electric Laydland of old hard drives). During this time I’ve learned some things, confirmed some suspicions, and am able to declare the one immutable truth: a writer writes, and if you’ve written, you are allowed to call yourself a writer. Everything else is a matter of opinion, luck, timing, and time.
And, as the poet and statesman Steve Miller once sang, Time Keeps on Slippin’ into the Future…
