The more I deal with professionals in my career, the more I have to be vague. I’m not going to blog my rejections, or even who did them. It’s unprofessional, and if an agent/editor googles you and sees you talking crap about people who rejected you, you’re going to look bad.
If you and I were in a bar somewhere, I’d have no problem telling you anything going on. I just don’t want it in public, or searchable. Gotta be professional.
So with that said, yesterday I got a great disappointment. I was pretty upset, and as I was driving around yesterday afternoon, I was going through all the situations of what I could do now. What my next step should be. I was brainstorming at top speed, coming up with 100 different ideas.
Then I stopped.
Yesterday at the height of disappointment was not the time to make decisions. As I’ve said before, I needed to give myself a definite span of time to feel bad, to mourn, for lack of a better word. It’s not a good idea to make any decision when emotions are high, and that fits in writing as well.
And the next step is always clear in writing:
- Write.
- Finish.
- Send it out.
- Work on the next project – AKA- GOTO 1. (Sorry. A little BASIC joke.)
So I have my next step. And when the emotions calm down, I can think about what to do about Yesterday’s Great Disappointment.
But for now, I write.
Writing prompt for June 11: Someone gives your protag a gift certificate to a spa for a day of pampering. Does s/he go?
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7 Responses to Don’t make hasty decisions
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Don’t let disappointment knock you down Mur, you wouldn’t have gotten where you are now without turning your “disappointments” into successes. Look at what happened with Playing for Keeps
Superb and sensible advice. It’s funny, one key mantra for a writer is “have a thick skin, have a thick skin”, yet no matter how much we manage to convince ourselves, when bad news or disappointment comes it still hurts like hell. But your little algorithm is a perfect summary. We write, we keep writing, and when we’ve written, we write some more.
I think if you take a breath and give yourself a fixed span of Angry Thinking Time and not worry that you’ve spent a day doing nothing but feeling, well, angry and haven’t got any writing done, you feel a lot better in the long run.
You had me at “BASIC joke”.
That take a breather thing is a good reminder in other areas too… I’m working from home today and need to keep reminding myself to pause before doling out punishment when the munchkins fight with each other. Partially this is to make sure I’m being fair to them and acknowledging the limitations of their reasoning power (and that they’re all stressed because Mom has been gone for a couple days)… and partially to keep me from taking away their privilege to watch TV/play Wii which would greatly diminish my ability to get work done while at home.
For me the parenting equivalent to write/send it out is take a breath/hug a kid… alas they don’t want to wait till tomorrow for me to decide if they can play Wii today.
Thanks for the reminder… and though long-term-goal wise I should be writing… right now I should be coding.
Next time you’re in town, I’ll buy you a beer and you can tell me all about it.
But yeah, it’s always good to let yourself calm down a little before doing anything. It’s only after you get the heart rate down and take a few deep breaths that you’re able to realize that “fight” and “flight” aren’t the only possible responses!
Also, is it wrong to secretly keep a list of people who rejected you so that you can go “Nyah nyah!” at them later when you’re famous? Er, not that I would ever do that, of course…
Ah, BASIC jokes. So much nostalgia. (I still own a floppy 5.25″ disk of BASIC programs I wrote as a kid on my Commodore 64.)
Yes, keep writing. (I adore your Writertopia wordcount generator btw.)
Ah, I see your mistake. I prefer the Schrödinger’s cat method. By not sending in my MS and definitely not letting beta readers see it, I am equally a dead cat, or JK Rowling.
In this way I maintain my claim to be “potentially the funniest writer to have ever lived”, which, I think you’ll agree, is substantially better than being an irradiated moggy.
On a more serious note – If you knew the secret for giving everyone what they wanted then you’d be…is there a god of chocolate and ponies?
(As for the BASIC – I was taught very early on, if you can’t say it in COBOL don’t say it at all)
I think the most important thing I ever learned about writing was to cool down before you write anything that anyone else gets to see. Not that I don’t still write in the heat of the moment; I just put it in the drawer and let it cool for a day. That’s saved me many a headache with my column — and with letters to the editor.