Today's post is going to be kind of stream of consciousness, so I'll
preface it in a way that I hope will help people understand what I'm
writing about. Nearly every kid playing high school football has dreams
about someday making it to the NFL, but a very small percentage even get
the chance to play in college. The ones who become college football
players know they've made it over the first hurdle and think they've got
a better chance than before, but even fewer ever get their shot at
playing in the NFL when the time comes. And once the pageantry of Draft
Day is over and the real work starts, they have to fight and struggle to
keep their position. Even with all of that, I keep hearing the
statistic that the average NFL player has a career of about five years.
So imagine what kind of odds Payton Manning had to beat to become Payton
Manning.
I see this series of trying to jump through
smaller and smaller hoops as a good analogy for what it takes to become a
published author. My attempts and inevitable frustrations with that
goal have been well-documented here on Summer Vacation, but perhaps some
of you don't know I'm not the only writer in my family. Three of my
cousins can also lay claim to that sad and desperate title, but at
different stages in our character arcs: One, much like me, is a teacher
with a writing background and a strong voice he's developed over many
years, who has hacked away at manuscripts with the hope of having one
someday see the light of day. One is younger than I am and has actually
broken through to some success, having published a library-bound
middle-grade series with a publishing company local to the Cities. That
taste of success, along with a crazy amount of dedication and hard work,
also took him far enough to land a literary agent for his follow-up
manuscript. Cousin #3 is a middle school kid who is all over the place
with his ambition right now, playing with different ideas, using his
ability in school and developing a written voice that I wouldn't have
minded having in my early teenage years.
When school
ended today and I was waiting to walk my partner out to the parking lot,
I checked my e-mail and saw that Cousin #2 had broken off his
professional relationship with his agent today. He gave me a quick
update on how it all happened, and frankly I wasn't that surprised. I
know nothing about the agent other than what he's told me and he's never
said anything bad, but as optimistic as he'd been about working with
her when they got together, things didn't work out. And though it's
disappointing, we agreed that the break was really for the best. After
all, as anyone who was spent waaaay too much time reading author blogs
and writer message boards and online articles about the publishing
industry would tell you, it isn't enough for a writer to have an agent
if it isn't the right agent.
I've had a couple
near-brushes with literary agents myself. I've made semi-serious
attempts at submitting two of my manuscripts, and each of those two
manuscripts got as far as two different agents asking to see them but
both ultimately passing. Disappointing both times, but not surprising
because I know how hard it is to make this happen. But the
disappointment is more tempered for me now than it would have been ten
or fifteen years ago. Closing in on a semi-landmark birthday in not too
many more days means that a lot of life has already gone by for me, and
any kind of a career I would have as an author would wind up being
something very different than what I would have imagined it as when I
was fifteen or twenty or thirty. I know I'm not going to be the
bestselling multi-millionaire with a movie theater built into my private
jet, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want that at this point. Who wants
the hassle?
But it would be nice to someday take a
story idea that I like and work hard at making it something special,
then someday having it find the widest audience it could. Writing is a
solitary chore, but it's ultimately about communicating ideas and
sharing some of yourself. When I post something here and check the hit
count later to see how many people visited the link, it's nice to
occasionally find out that something connected with people enough that
more than usual came to read it. I'm a pretty internal person, so
whatever I do with writing often becomes a way people first learn things
about me that otherwise would be (admittedly) difficult to learn. But I
think almost anything I take the time to write has a piece of me in it,
especially a manuscript. I'll usually spend some time refining these
blog posts to make whatever my message is clear and (hopefully)
enjoyable or thought-provoking, but I put myself into almost everything I
write. I prewrite birthday card greetings. I'll write first and second
drafts of Post-It notes that I'm sticking on something I'm passing off
to another teacher. I'll edit text messages before I click send. I'll
revise shopping lists that I'm going to delete off my phone before I
even make it to the checkout.
I guess in a roundabout
way I'm trying to say tonight that no matter how hopeless the odds are
of one of my manuscripts ever becoming something I can walk into Barnes
and Noble and see on the shelf, I still keep writing because I have to. I
can't imagine a time in my life when I would ever just decide to stop.
The ideas and the compulsion to express them would still eventually
reach the point where I would have to get them out somehow, and not
doing that would be like never being able to let go of a massive sneeze
that had built up in my head. And I know that my cousin is the same way.
Losing one agent might be a disappointment, but it's also giving him a
renewed chance at chasing the dream. I've been chasing it a lot longer
than he has, and I have no plans of walking away.
And
if this going only means I'm in for a lifetime of disappointments? Then
that's how it goes. There are different levels of disappointment after
all. A lot of guys in the world are walking around still proud of their
eight-month NFL careers. Or the starting spot they earned on their
college team. Or when their high school team was only one round away
from the state quarterfinals.
I don't need to be Payton
Manning. Or Justin Cronin, or Nick Hornby, or Stephen King. But it'd
sure be nice to someday see the blood I poured onto my pages on the same
shelf beside theirs.
