trying too hard

When I was in high school, I learned that I was good at academics and I was bad at sports. I worked hard at school, but I didn't spend every minute of the day at it. I never felt like I was in over my head. I did a couple of hours of homework at night, rarely had homework on the weekends, and I got loads of scholarships. On the other hand, I killed myself swimming 5 hours a day and showed almost no improvement after six months and didn't make any of the goals I had set for myself. Clearly, my hard work didn't matter in one area and it did in another.

Conclusion: I was simply naturally bad at sports. But obviously, that turned out not to be true, in hindsight. It turned out that trying hard wasn't the only thing that matters to success.

When I look back at high school, I can see clearly now what I did wrong when it came to swimming. I didn't have a plan. I didn't understand anything about the importance of recovery. I didn't think about how important it was to workout year round. And the advice I got seemed to me to translate into trying harder. Trying harder, as it turns out, is not really great advice for people who are already trying hard and failing. I suppose it's not always easy to figure out if someone actually is trying hard. But if you are trying hard and failing, it might be worthwhile to think about trying something differently. And possibly even trying it less hard.

This translates into writing in a very specific way. I have been seeing more and more writers at conferences and critiques who listen to me and to others give feedback, then are extremely frustrated because it turns out we are telling them to do the opposite thing that their writing group has told them or the last workshop or last editor they talked to. It feels to them like all their willingness to work hard and listen and take feedback is actually making them farther and farther from the goal than doing nothing would have done. And guess what? In a way, they are right.

If you have workshopped a manuscript already, I don't think you should bring it to another workshop. I'm not saying you have to give up on it, but you need some perspective. And I'm talking about possibly years of perspective. It will eventually come clear to you what is wrong and probably how to fix it. But you need to do something fresh to get to that perspective. You need to read and you need to stop getting feedback on that manuscript. You need some recovery.

It may feel like that makes no sense, that you should just keep working on that manuscript harder in order to whip it into shape, but I haven't seen that happen. Ever. What I see happening is writers giving up writing entirely and never coming back to it because they are so frustrated. Or alternatively, I see people letting it go and then working on another manuscript that they will be able to take farther.

Over-working a manuscript is as likely as over-working pie crust. You can feel it when you read it. The joy is missing. There are strange mistakes, missing details that would help everything make sense. Characters jump around, fervently doing things to show that they are active, not passive, without the interiority that would make us care about them. And nothing matters, somehow. I can describe it, but it's hard to point out a sentence on the page that is the root of this problem. It's in the writer rather than the manuscript.

So take a vacation from writing. Read some books. Watch the TV shows that you've been meaning to get to. Laugh. When I signed up with a coach to do my first Ironman, about 3 months before the race, the first thing he told me to do was take a half week off. He wouldn't let me do anything. I went a little stir crazy, and ended up taking time to learn some things like changing a tire to help me deal with other anxieties about the race. I had been pushing myself too hard for too long. And he needed me to be able to start fresh. Let me tell you, he pushed me plenty hard. And I pushed myself. But when it was the right time, and when I was recovered enough to go into it optimistically.

If you want to throw your manuscript away, if you are ready to give up on your dream, your mind and body are telling you something important. You don't need to work harder. You need to work smarter. After you've rested and relaxed and remembered what it is that writing is about, anyway. And guess what that is? Fun.