A Letter from a Reader

Hi, Marion,I have a question that I don't have the courage to post publicly, but I thought I would send it to you in confidence and see if you wish to address it or not. I am at the panic stage of writing, really. Four years out of my MFA program, lots of rejections, close calls, "good" rejections with feedback from editors and agents... but feeling no closer to my dream of one day having a book (or two) published. I feel very much on the outside of the publishing world, despite the fact I know many accomplished authors. I follow the rules and craft my queries, follow timelines and conference advice on follow-ups, researching agents, etc. And the goal seems to keep moving further away... a very UN- zen approach to writing, I know! Is the "getting out my own way" a luxury of the published, once certain goals have been reached or barricades breached? Because I feel like everything I write is dependent on someone else's approval... the someday editor, the maybe agent. I guess I'm just voicing a painful cry from the trenches that I know is not unique to me. Maybe your words of advice will help those of us who are stuck "in the middle," so to speak.I’ll admit that the letter-writer is right, or almost. If “getting out of my own way” isn’t quite a luxury of the published, it is certainly something much easier to do at the end of a career than the beginning. Which is why my blog was about the gifts I’ve discovered in maturity.I can promise this, though: As hard as it is when you haven’t yet had anything that can be labeled success, if you keep writing and keep working at getting out of your own way, rewards wait.When I taught in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA Program in Writing for Children and Young Adults, here’s something I often said to students who came into the program desperate to publish: “If you can forget about publishing and simply use this time to write, to explore, to discover, if you can put aside any idea of success and instead work on learning who you are and what you have to say, if you can keep trying new things and risking failure, then the chances are very good that you will, indeed, be published.”I recognize that waiting for “proof” of the value of your work must be especially hard when you’ve made the financial and time commitment to an MFA program, even harder when you see friends who made that same commitment getting published ahead of you, and harder still when years are slipping past. But … if you can keep asking, not “Who wants this?” but “What do I want? What do I most need to write?” you will, I promise, be doing the best you possibly can to reach your goal.And … what if the worst happens? What if you are never published? The market seems to grow more difficult and more idiosyncratic every year. Even so, you will have been doing, all along, the work that feeds your soul, that makes you a larger, more generous person, and, more concretely, is guaranteed to keep improving your writing.If publication eludes you forever, you will still have created a gift for yourself and for those who care about you.I am often reminded that writing is the only one of the arts in which people seem to assume you must be a professional, be published. When have you last heard a musician say I won’t play the piano unless I can be on a concert stage or a visual artist say I won’t paint unless my work will be displayed in museums? Why should writers assume publication is the only reason for writing?I know this is easy for someone to say who has been publishing for many years. Nonetheless, I repeat: in all my career I have found nothing more precious than my daily practice of sitting down to write.I wish you—every one of you who is longing for publication—the most glowing success! But I also hope you’ll remember that the act of writing is its own reward.