I was reading the introduction to the collected works of Calvin & Hobbes the other day, in which Bill Watterson describes how he dealt with the failure to attract any kind of interest in his work:
“Unemployed with no prospects, I drew up a comic strip about a loudmouthed spaceman and his dimwitted assistant, based on characters I’d drawn for a German class in high school. I sent the strip off to the newspaper syndicates, and about six weeks later, as my savings continued to dwindle, I opened the form letter rejections of my work. By the fall of 1981, I was living with my parents again, trying to come up with a different comic strip. At this point I had four years to go before drawing Calvin and Hobbes.”
Four years to go. That is an extremely long time when you’ve created so much already and don’t have any recognition to show for it (if that’s what you’re striving for, which in this case it was). And I can imagine how he must have felt: like it would never happen. Like the worlds he was creating weren’t worth a thing to anybody. Like he should give up and channel his energies into something more ‘productive’.
But that’s the thing: you don’t give up. Because you can’t. Deep down, you have a diamond-hard core of belief in yourself that this is definitely what you should be doing and that no matter how many rejections you get or how frustrated you become, that core will never be eroded.
I’m saying this because the past few months have been more than a little weird, and I struggled to motivate myself to hack out some words at the computer. The rejections started to flood in for Mekong Lights, my progress stalled on my current project, and sales of By the Feet of Men dwindled to virtually nothing. I didn’t see the point in writing short stories, and I had nothing to add to the ‘new normal’ conversation. I did wonder if my core of belief was still there. But I rode it out and now, today, I’ve just finished the first draft of my fourth novel. It’s rough as hell and full of half-formed ideas and uneven character development - just as it’s supposed to be. The point is that there’s no need to worry about whether that desire is still there. If you’re serious about what you’re doing, then it is. What’s essential is to accept that there will be times of rejection, just as there will be times of recognition and satisfaction. Just got to keep putting in the hours.
In other (somewhat related) news, I had a short story accepted by the people at Kallisto Gaia Press. I think it’s a print-only magazine. No idea when it’ll be out, but I’m pleased because I wrote the story three years ago and received perhaps twelve rejections during that period. Unlike other stories, where I put it aside after a certain number of rejections, I kept revising this one and tweaking it because I really did believe it was good. The acceptance is all the sweeter, because this is the first short story I’ve had published since last spring (though I did all but cease submitting due to By the Feet of Men requiring all my time).
Funky music for May:
they know.