Hard Work and Failure



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 I never saw a land I couldn't get to on the basis of hard work.

Well, that's not entirely true. Somewhere around the age of sixteen I figured out that, while I could major in a math based program (engineering or calculus), I would have to work ten times harder than the hardest worker to stay even remotely competitive. I decided it wasn't worth it and majored in Pre-Law. *rolls eyes*

I wanted...oh-so-badly-wanted to major in English or Creative Writing.

I know.

But since I was the one paying the bills on the whole college education thing, I felt an English major was an indulgence and wouldn't benefit my job prospects. After all, the goal of a college degree is to get a good job. So I majored in a slightly less worthless category and rationalized it with working as a paralegal while gathering applications to law school.

But I had to take some English classes, and I happened to take a class taught by the chair (head?) of the English department.

The very first day he had us write and essay, on the fly, and (after review) read mine out loud as the best one. I wrote about seeing my sister born and he particularly liked the line-- "I didn't know whether to laugh, or cry or throw up..."  It was the first time I felt like I had a real chance to become a writer someday.
He tried to get me to major in English. Begged.
And I chewed my lip and sat in my dorm room for a long time trying to come up with a realistic way an English degree would pay my bills, and it just wasn't happening. (for me)

But I tucked that experience away for use later. "Write a book and sell it" was what I planned to do after I became a stay-at-home mom. When I was older, more experianced and had time.

I pulled out my manuscript-- the book I wrote when I was fifteen-- when I went on bed rest with my first at 33 weeks. No one told me that motherhood fried your brain cells so I just stared at the page and thought about food and my blood pressure.

I tried again after he was born. I had creative energy, but this time I just blinked at the computer and thought about sleeping.

When my first was eight months old, I started writing. And I re-wrote. And re-wrote.

Then I tried to do a query and realized I had nothing even related to a plot.

I re-wrote again.

I sent it to beta readers, and realized I had a lot to learn on the craft of writing.

So then I re-wrote.

And re-wrote.

And then I wrote another query and had another round of betas. This got me to something okay. It was sparse and it lacked...a lot. But it was closer than I'd ever been. I thought about querying, but I was too scared to fail.

So I put it away.

I worked on another book. Got pregnant and the same mental state hit-- the one where I couldn't do anything but think of food or sleep when I tried to write. So I didn't touch the keyboard for a year.
When I returned to writing, I returned to the latest project, until I was so sick of seeing it I couldn't even look at my desk.

And finally, I circled back to querying the first book.

Three years since I first started, I finally understood why more people aren't novelists. Why they say the first million words are practice (I think I'm right around the million mark).

The novel I'm querying isn't fantastic. I mean, I can look at more recent work and see the difference in quality. I'm starting to hit my stride in story-telling instead of fumbling with how to put the pieces together. But I worked my ass off on that story, and I got it the best I could. I owe it to myself and Lily (the MC) to try.

If I fail. I fail.

Don't get me wrong, I have existential crisises all the time about whether or not I should keep working so hard at something I'm continually failing at. But for now...I'll keep going.

It's like this:

I'm really bad at under hangs in rock climbing. Get me on anything less than vertical and my butt just peels right off. I can barely do a move over an arete. And by barely I mean, I usually don't even try. At the gym the other day, I got on a problem in the boulder cave. Completely upside down, big juggy holds for my hands (I think it was a V1 in case anyone knows what that means-- pretty easy for those who don't) and I made it one move in. Then maybe five tries later, I got two moves in. Another few attempts and I almost had the third move down.

I didn't complete the problem, didn't succeed by any stretch of the imagination. Fell on my ass over and over again. But there was something intensely gratifying about trying so damn hard and making tiny bits of progress. People around me were doing things much harder, much better. But I was happy to focus on my own problem, whether I failed or not.

That's how I feel about writing.

P.S. That's Christ Sharma in the picture, the world's greatest rock climber. He's upside down on the world's hardest boulder problem. He falls a lot. But he's great because he's combined amazing talent with a lot of knuckle scraping, tendon popping, muscle shaking hard work.