Eyes OFF The Prize

First, a disclaimer: I am not a published author. I'm a marginally successful and marginally sane academic. This post is primarily about maintaining your sanity, and not about success in publishing. It seems to me that if you want to be successful in publishing, it may help you to do the opposite of what I advise.

Now.

We all have those dreams of perfection in writing. The draft that makes you so passionate, so gleeful, it writes itself over a long weekend away at your cabin in the mountains. The editing process that is so productive, so take-no-prisoners, that you emerge with attractively rugged battle scars and a finished draft gleaming and sparkling like the holy grail. The query process that involves just one letter to just the perfect agent who then sells your book the next day to just the right publisher for more money than you've ever earned doing miserable menial labor all your life. And the book is optioned for film before it is even released in print, and preorders alone put you on the NYT best sellers list, and your favorite actor is cast as the hero, and you win the most prestigious award, and every author you've ever admired approaches you at industry events to give you a pat on the back and ask you to team up with them for an anthology. And everything you ever write from then on is better than the last, and sold on pre-empt, and politics and the economy don't matter anymore because you can spend the rest of your days writing from your cabin in the mountains and being loved for it

I've had these fantasies. If you haven't, then you don't torment yourself enough with stories of others' perfection. Good for you! You don't need to read this and you can go back to your bliss.

These fantasies come from bursts of success we observe in others. We piece together the glory stories from many into one grand expectation for ourselves. But perfection has a very ugly side, and that's the bitter, rancid discomfort it makes the rest of us plebeians feel. It's easy to get sucked into the perceived race to perfection in publishing. Every day we are assaulted from both sides with stories of the immense success of others and stories about how publishing is imploding and sinking into its own special circle of the underworld. This makes perfection seem even more urgent because it feels like it's Black Friday all the time and supplies won't last and we need to disfigure ourselves racing for the prize or get trampled to death trying.

This feeling of simultaneous inadequacy and being terribly behind in the race got me so agitated that reading agent blogs and publisher's weekly and even listening to the success of others at events made me feel like I'd just downed an entire franchise of Starbucks worth of caffeine and I'd wander about in a crazed semi-consciousness, rending my clothes and writing maniacally. I had to write the best thing and I had to write it now or I'd DIE. I'd lose the publishing perfection race and I'd DIE.

And this is when, as is often the case, elementary school mandates come in handy. The only mantra that can shake me out of this rabid foaming frenzy is this:

Eyes on your own paper!

But Julie just wrote a book in seven days!

Eyes on your own paper!

But Tim just got a three book deal!

Eyes on your own paper! 

But but but! 

You know what I'm going to say. 

For me, living this mantra meant that I cut back significantly on the industry blogs I read. I got rid of my twitter account. I stopped going to so many events. And when certain friends who liked to regale me with their success called, I sometimes let it go to voicemail.

Maybe that makes me a bad friend. But you know what it means I have been doing a lot more of? Writing. Breathing. Sleeping. Things other than panicking.

Maybe, as I said, this is not the best strategy to getting published. This means that if an agent does bite at a query, I'll need to look them up because I don't know what every agent I query had for breakfast that morning anymore. This means that if I ever do publish a novel, I'll need to start over on my twitter and all of that.

But those are doable things. And in the meantime, I can wrap myself in the fluffy robe of my sanity and write something I love, and let it breathe and grow organically.

And that is its own kind of perfection. 

Ariane is our resident guest poster at Tangled. She is a grad student who loves urban fantasy and romance. She enjoys mythology, psychology, and playing with her dog. Ariane excels at video games, public speaking, and making macaroni and cheese. Her favorite authors are John Steinbeck and Anne Bishop. She lives in Boston.