Writing for Gold

Warning:  if you’re tired of hearing about the Rio Olympics, please log off because I am enjoying them and intend, in this post, to tie them into writing.

A few years ago, I found myself trapped into participating in a Nielsen phone survey. One of the questions asked what my favorite sports were. I answered “The Olympics” and “The Kentucky Derby.” Granted, I was messing with the survey taker, but I was also being honest. I love the Olympic Games. Some events are my favorites. Some are interesting. Some bore me. That’s okay. I like the thrill of competition. I like to see people who have trained themselves to their maximum potential being tested–and sometimes bested. I like to learn about the city and culture where the Games are occurring. I like to see color pieces on athletes from different countries, because how else will I ever know their names or the fact that they exist and are perhaps training under inadequate or even appalling conditions?

I’m old enough to remember when ABC Sports covered international competitions every Saturday afternoon and did a magnificent job of covering the Olympics. I remember when we saw all the other gymnasts competing against the American team, instead of the cameras trained on our athletes waiting, waiting, waiting for their turn at the next rotation. I remember interviews of athletes from various countries. I remember coverage of controversies, cheating, the terrorist attack against the Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village, charges of doping, the scary appearance of East German female swimmers on steroids, etc. I remember the stoic faces of Soviet gymnasts and how they competed do or die, with failure not an option.

When I learned the Games were to be in Rio, I expected marvelous explorations of Brazil and its rich, dynamic culture. So far, I have seen Tom Brokaw’s piece on the Amazon and its surrounding rain forest and a chat with Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir on how much glitter they wore while participating in the Carnivale parade. I could rant quite a while on how disappointing NBC coverage is, and how this year it’s offered a paucity of information on the athletes and is going out of its way to avoid any negative coverage about anything. Is it too much to ask the commentators to explain in ten seconds why China was disqualified from the men’s swimming relay? (Yes, I found out via another means, but why did I have to dig?) Or, to be fair, perhaps NBC reporters refused to risk their health exploring Brazil.

[Naturally, since I wrote this post this morning, track and field competition lag times today allowed NBC to air color pieces on Usain Bolt and the young South African runner Wayde Van Niekerk, so now I feel slightly acquainted with these athletes and more invested in whether they win or lose their events.]

Okay, so to the point of this post–which is really about drawing lessons from champions whether they are on the track, swiveling around a pommel horse, playing beach volleyball, rowing, fencing, cycling, or pounding a keyboard. Elite athletes are all about training, discipline, sacrifice, and courage. They continue despite pain and injury. They give 150 percent, and they believe in their dreams of victory. They also know that no matter how good they are, there is a real possibility that a competitor will be better. They could place 4th or 5th in the race, and go home knowing only that they tried their best and it was not enough to grab glory.

Writing for publication is all about training, dedication, discipline, and sacrifice. It’s all about having dreams–that this story will pull together and be good enough to sell, or this novel might be the bestseller. And it’s all about putting in the long, sometimes tedious hours to make that dream happen. But dreams–no matter how big–need a reality check as well.

I tell my students:  “Just because you’ve written something, that doesn’t mean it’s any good. Just because you write something good, that doesn’t mean it will sell. And just because a piece of your writing is published, that doesn’t mean the public will read it.”

Writers, like athletes, need to train for victory but be prepared for defeat. There are no guarantees in the publishing industry. You can write an amazing story, and be rejected because the editor just bought someone else’s work for the last slot of her publishing schedule for that year. It doesn’t mean your story’s no good. It means your timing was slow.

When an amazing athlete who has persevered despite adversity, inadequate facilities, injuries, and financial hardship loses a gold medal by ninety-nine one-thousandths of a point, that’s agonizing. It’s easy to shout, “Unfair! He deserved to win!” Yet in fact, he lost because another athlete was just that microscopic scrinch of a point better.

Consider a runner about to come in third, but achieves silver because she leans forward as she crosses the finish line, and that lean puts her ahead of a competitor that would have otherwise beaten her. That will to win marks the true champion. It’s why one horse racing neck and neck with a competitor in the Kentucky Derby will stretch out its nose at the finish, wining by a whisker–always driven by the will to make it, to keep trying.

When Mo Farah of Great Britain tripped and fell in the men’s 10,000-meter race, he got up and resumed the race and won. That is the heart of a champion. And every writer who is trying to break in and stay in needs that quality.

There will be writing disappointments. Getting published is hard, so hard that sometimes writers are too timid to even try. Yet you must try and keep trying, no matter how many rejections you collect or how much they hurt. Evaluate yourself and what you’re doing in your stories–or not doing. Make adjustments.

Sometimes, rejection is not about the quality of your work at all. You write for a fickle public. And public taste changes. You can sell a manuscript to a publisher and by the time your novel reaches publication, the trend may have shifted to a different genre, leaving you in the dust. Your quality has not lessened. But the world has changed on you.

Consider two women gymnasts on this year’s American team: Aly Raisman and Gabby Douglas. In the 2012 London Games, Aly should have medaled. She tied for a bronze, yet the rules said only one athlete could be in third place. So Aly was dumped into fourth by the judges. This year, Gabby came roaring back from her previous Olympic victories, but she failed to qualify for competition in the all-around. Both of these athletes are exceptionally good. The current rule that says only two team members can compete in the all-around seems unfair, especially when a team as talented as the US brings in so many outstanding competitors. But it’s the rule.

Both young women have been slammed by rules that hurt and disappointed them. Aly dug in and channeled her determination to return to the 2016 Games and try again. And this time, there was no question when she outperformed the Russian Aliya Mustafina to win all-around silver. Gabby, by contrast, has sulked publicly. She sat in the stands during the all-around competition, but would not cheer for Aly or Simone. She clapped politely but without enthusiasm, her churlish poor sportsmanship on display for the whole world to see. Maybe she’ll win an individual medal, and maybe she won’t lose endorsements, but she’s been acting like a writer that can’t take criticism and would rather pout and blame editors for poor sales than go on trying to write better.

Compare Gabby’s behavior with the swimmer Ryan Lochte. In his final event before retirement, he came in fifth. He was disappointed by his performance. It was obviously not the way he wanted to finish his career. However, he’s a good sportsman. He was gracious to the reporter interviewing him, and although his disappointment was not hidden he moved past it to be in the stands, cheering on his more victorious teammates. That’s grace and maturity, and Gabby needs to learn both.

As for writers, after you’ve poured months of sheer hard work into a project such as a novel, to have it turned down or picked apart or ignored by an editor hurts. It will always hurt. But you must put it behind you and evaluate why you were turned down so you can move forward, either by fixing the manuscript’s problems, or marketing it elsewhere, or deciding honestly whether it’s worthy of self-publishing electronically.

The latter option should never be a crutch, a safety net, or a refuge of self-deception. Use it–not to dump flawed manuscripts into the public arena–but to offer readers a crack at your story when editors just can’t make a place for you.

Editors do make mistakes. (Think about how many of them rejected J.K. Rowling’s first Harry Potter story.) Remember that editors are trying to play it safe in the fiction game. They have to answer to corporate bean counters that don’t care two cents for good writing and only want sure winners.

Well, folks, fiction is never a sure thing. We writers are jugglers of words and phrases on the street corner, hoping we have a plot or characters brightly colored enough to catch the eye of passing pedestrians. Sometimes the pedestrians stop and applaud. Sometimes a city bus roars by between our performance and the audience that turns away, disappointed in what they failed to see.

So we try again. And again. And again.

Train yourself. Know your craft. Write to the best of your ability, no matter how hard or challenging it is. Stick with it to the end. Stick with it despite the rejections and barricades between you and publication. Be gracious in disappointment. And use victory to propel you forward to the next challenge, that next and better story that lies within you.