I often get jittery around my failures or rather my lack of success. For example, for the last two months I have been submitting to journals almost every day. I have had only one acceptance so far. While I am grateful for that, I also feel anxious that I haven't had better luck. And then I begin to think, maybe it's just that I am not good enough. Maybe. But I also keep telling myself, I have a bad habit of starting projects and not finishing them. I have wasted a big part of my 20s that way. There were other reasons why I could not be "creative" in that way during my twenties, but this is also one of it. I have had the patience or persistence to see through things. Grad school has changed that a little bit. It has made me see how sometimes you just have to show up day after day without expecting results. And then one day, you really begin to see the difference in your own work. At least that's what has happened to me.
Now, I am struggling with the next stage. In the last four years that I have been taking writing seriously, I have been able to generate enough raw materials. But a lot of these are just that: raw materials, early drafts. Interesting, but not piercing enough. So, I need to take my work to the next level. I need to keep on working, polishing and revising my drafts.
Today, I am finally giving myself the permission to admit that:
I am not really that writer who will get it right the first time. Or not even in the second or the third or the fourth. But maybe in the sixteenth. And if I stay true to myself and the work till that sixteenth time, I will probably produce something that's halfway decent.
The struggle, then, is to stick to it. To keep coming back, even on days when I am feeling low, or like a massive failure.
PS. The accompanying painting is by artist Silvia Gold. It speaks to my present mood!
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