Writing Wednesday: Internal Sensors

So for my race this weekend, I ended up forgetting my watch. It ended up being a happy accident. Instead of fretting over the time passing while I had problems on my bike, I thought about other things.

I simply let myself feel how the pace I was going felt. I listened to my own body, my own sensors. I did it again today while doing a hard interval set at the track. I just went as hard as I thought I could sustain for the 12 repetitions I was supposed to get done, and rested until I was ready to go again. Not surprisingly, in both of these cases, I was a lot less anxious and self-judgmental about racing. I don't know for sure if I always have better results in these cases, but I often do. It turns out that stressing about getting the results you want is counterproductive. On some level, you have to let it go, and let come what will.

Probably the comparisons I am going to make here to writing are obvious, but I am going to explain them anyway. For a long time, in the beginning of my career, before I had sold my first book, I would count up a lot of the outside gauges I had of my progress because they were the only things that I had. I would use my writers' groups responses and see if they thought I was doing better. I would notice the fact that I was getting more personalized rejection letters rather than form rejections. Then, when I published my first book, I continued to look outside of myself for validation. Professional journal reviews were the biggest measures then, and of course, book sales themselves. If I wanted to see if I was more successful as an author, I looked at my advance numbers, and my agent's sales and then later, the number of goodreads 5-star reviews or those on amazon, or even crazier, the links to reviews on twitter.

I can't say that I believe I will completely go without any external measure of my writing, just as I don't think I'm going to get rid of my watch for all my training. But I have to say, there are some wonderful parts of being a published writer that have nothing to do with external validation. I'm not saying I think that any writer should live completely in a bubble. I think it's healthy to have a writers' group, an agent, and an editor. But there are times when it's great to take off the watch and just do the writing without any other voices in your head, without anyone looking over your shoulder. There's a time when it's important to only look inside. How does it feel? Is this right? Is this true? Is this the story I want to tell? Is this the best way to tell it? Are these characters I would lie down in the street for? Is this a world I would happily go back to for the rest of my life?