Maybe Next Time

I’m an all-or-nothing type person. It’s just the way I’m wired. My perfectionist streak has lost me a lot of opportunities over the years and it’s something I’m actively working on in therapy. Since childhood I have made a habit of quitting activities when they begin to feel out of my depth, preferring not to do them at all rather than do them inexpertly.

Writing was one of those activities for me. I have always been told I am a talented writer. The gifted classes, Power of the Pen competitions, and school writing contests led me to believe writing was my calling. Then it grew more difficult. I’d reached the boundary separating natural gift and hard-earned skill and didn’t want to push past it. It didn’t help that I had a strained relationship with parents who desperately decided any creative outlet had to be a moneymaking venture or it wasn’t worth doing.

I held on a little tighter than I had with other hobbies. My second year in college I decided to major in playwriting. I’d always loved theater, I was good at writing, it felt like a natural next step. I didn’t have the phrase, “Imposter Syndrome,” as part of my vocabulary yet, but that’s what hit me like a ton of bricks. I was suddenly surrounded by other writers who were very good. Better than me and more importantly, harder working than me.

I made a last-ditch effort to prove to myself that this was my calling and I followed (more like misinterpreted) my professor’s instructions to think, “outside the box,” on our next piece. So I did. And you know what happened? It. Fucking. Bombed. It bombed so hard. A one-act play that I thought would move the entire audience to tears had them absolutely tickled pink with laughter. I was devastated.

So I retreated to my familiar strategy: give up. And I did. For years. that play bombed when I was 19 years old. I didn’t tap-tap at a keyboard again until I was 31. I’d tried other things in the meantime, but nothing felt right. Nothing moved me the way that writing had.

On a whim I decided to participate in the NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) Challenge. I set a daily word goal and told my family what to expect in terms of my time needs. I did not hit that goal every day. And trust me, the urge to give up because I wasn’t doing it perfectly was strong.

I don’t know what it was. Therapy? Age? Seeing failure/hard work through the new lens of parenthood? Whatever it was, I was able to push past that old habit this time. The days I didn’t meet my goal didn’t matter, because I’d write extra the next day. The final day I ended up writing for hours and you know what? Before midnight I clicked that Finish button and I completed that challenge.

That’s when something in me shifted. Setting a tough goal and meeting it was all I needed to start to believe that it could be done and that the only thing standing in my way was me. Then the thought of editing an entire novel daunted me, but I told myself I’d been daunted by the idea of writing it and hey, I’d done that hadn’t I?

I edited it. I formatted it. I published it in digital version on Amazon and now I’m working on publishing the print version as well. I’ve submitted it to publishers who haven’t bitten yet. And that’s okay.

Writing has opened up a whole new world for me and it has nothing to do with whether or not a contest or publisher is responding well to my work. So far they haven’t, but I save the rejections in a little email folder that I lovingly christened – Maybe Next Time.

Because when you finally believe in yourself enough to keep going, there’s always a next time.

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