Submit or Surrender? Why I Can't Listen To My Own Writing Advice

The torture of cold submissions

Paisley Abbey gargoyle © User: Colin, Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.)

“I give myself very good advice,” sobs a despondent Alice in Disney’s 1951 Alice in Wonderland. “But I very seldom follow it.”

In a recent essay, the second chapter of My Future Shock Hell!, I gave you, gentle reader, some very good advice on the business of ‘rejection-proofing your soul’ when it comes to submitting a project ‘cold’ - that is, surrendering your hard-won comic script, screenplay, or novel to someone under no obligation to give a shit.

“The truth is, cold submissions never get easier,” I said. “You just get better at coping with them.”

Only, I’m not sure I ever have.

“You can’t control what happens once you’ve emailed your pitch or your script. You can’t control whether it gets accepted or rejected…

“So don’t distract yourself by worrying about the possibilities. Focus on the project and your writing. Don’t worry about failing or succeeding. Keep a clear head. This allows you to bring all your experience and ability to bear, and this will help you write as well as you possibly can.”

But right now, I’m sorely reminded that maintaining this state of mind is a very big ask indeed.

I’ve just made a cold submission that – should it get picked up – might possibly change the course of my career. I’ve done my best on this enterprise, brought all that experience and ability to bear, to the point where I feel the project on offer is as good as it could reasonably be.

I studied the movements of the target opportunity and calibrated accordingly. I checked weather conditions, calculated windspeed, over and over, until the time finally came to eye the scope and pull the trigger. Then I packed up, walked away and did my best to forget I’d ever done it.

Logic tells me the chances of hitting that target are remote. I’m up against a zillion other submissions whose writers possess more talent, keener ideas, and more applicable experience than me. I’ve also had my heart broken enough times to know that a submission can fail for just about any random reason. Maybe Gmail was having an off day and your submission got gobbled up by a Junk folder. Maybe the editor just commissioned something similar, or they just got fired. Or the project’s been cancelled because the Olympians up in head office decided to ‘try another direction’.

So I tell myself to forget it, that rejection is a certainty. It’s a mindset that’s halfway between realistic and protecting myself from disappointment.

But there has to be a chance, right?

I wouldn’t buy a lottery ticket if I didn’t think there was a chance I could win at least something. After all, it’s a bloody good script. I may no longer have youth and a six-pack, but in terms of experience I’m jacked to the nines. And I have a genuine voice. ‘Don’t sell yourself short,’ I’ll tell myself. ‘You’ve just as much chance as anyone else. Maybe you will get that belly-flipping email in a few months’ time…’ But even imagining that possibility feels like I’m crossing some fateful line, like I’m inviting Loki, Eris, Anansi and all their trickster drinking buddies to teach me a lesson in cosmic humility.

So maybe I will get that email. Or maybe I’ll get the one that says ‘thank you, but unfortunately…’ Or maybe I’ll hear nothing at all. This is why the wise writer walks away and empties their head of all thoughts of what they’ve just done. They don’t want to get tossed around inside that tumble-dryer of emotions.

“Never tell me the odds.”

Han Solo

The passion I have for my no-invoice-at-the-end-of-this-rainbow projects is what carries me through the writing. I get so worked up about doing them that I can’t not do them. It’s a zeal that’s infectious and gains this crazed momentum that usefully blinds me to the potential pointlessness lurking at the end of it all. Who cares whether this thing gets picked up or not. I’m making it what it needs to be, dammit! I’m creating, darling!”

And when I fire off that project and it ends up dwindling into darkness, I’ll inevitably mourn all those hours of wasted labour. But what the hell. I made those characters breathe. I gave it a shot.

The hard part is mustering the will to do it all over again…

The savvy writer knows their chances of success are immediately doubled if they’re offering more than one project. You’re way more likely to hit that target if you just keep shooting. Only suckers pin their hopes on getting somewhere with that one screenplay, that one novel.

But the prospect of going through that torture again? Knowing that it will most likely earn you nothing but indifference? That’s the sound of your motivation taking a critical hit. Imagine another eight weeks or - somehow - eight months away from paid work, knowing as you’re writing that it will get you nowhere. Hell, you may as well be smothering your pages in Sun-Pat and feeding them to the dog.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein

This is where I am right now, feeling a little lost, a little sour at the thought of doing something for nothing all over again next year. A good time, then, for thinking and feeling a way out of this funk and sharing that immediacy with you, the good people who have been generous enough to afford me room in your already groaning inbox.

Once again, I come back to this poem, which reminds us that excellence and success are two very different things…

THE NEED TO WIN

“When an archer is shooting for nothing

He has all his skill.

If he shoots for a brass buckle

He is already nervous.

If he shoots for a prize of gold

He goes blind

Or sees two targets –

He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed. But the prize

Divides him. He cares.

He thinks more of winning

Than of shooting –

And the need to win

Drains him of power.”

The Way of Chuang Tzu, translated by Thomas Merton

I’m reminded too of that pivotal moment in Phil Alden Robinson’s Field of Dreams (1989), one of the great American fantasy films and worthy of a place alongside The Wizard of Oz (1939) and It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Kevin Costner plays the Iowa farmer who heeds a ghostly voice in his cornfield suggesting he do something insane: chop down those precious crops and build an empty baseball field there instead. Sensing some ineffable benefit to this pointless endeavour, Kev surrenders himself - and his family - to this uncanny whim.

Months pass, ghosts gather, and bills mount.

Wonderment inevitably gives way to entitlement as Kev confronts disgraced baseball legend ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta playing maybe a ghost, maybe an echo in time, maybe something else) and demands what every creative soul demands at some point, “What’s in it for me?”

“Is that why you did this?” says Joe. “For you?”

(I love that uncomfortable little pause Costner gives just before he drops the line, like he knows he’s about to cross a sacred boundary.)

The craft really is all that matters; the doing of it is an end unto itself. Chasing fame is empty and treacherous. Seeking love from readers is a tragic errand. And writing solely for cash will eventually exorcise your spirit. None of these things can you trust. But your craft? Alec points at craft like he’s Conan’s dad pointing at a fine steel blade…

“This you can trust.”

Hone your craft. Read, write, study. All you ever need to care about in writing is your writing. So, yeah, write like you’ve already been rejected. because if you’re caring about being rejected, then you’re not writing with a clear head.

And a clear head is the surest routine to success. (Just don’t tell yourself that, or else you’re back to caring about outward reward once again.)

Writers of drama think about stakes all the time. Giving the protagonist something to win or lose energises a scene, makes the reader care. But thinking about what’s at stake for you? That will hobble your writing like a sledgehammer to the ankles. Craving potential reward - money, followers, subscribers, adulation - or guarding against potential disaster - misreadings, cancellation, outrage or apathy - these will only blunt your craft and stop you from getting the job done.

Focus not on the target, but on the immediacy of the craft.

And stay weird.