Celebrate rejection

My biggest difficulty as a writer is not producing material, but in giving material to other people. Right now I have a book draft and a book proposal, and the next step is to send it to someone. I can do that now—sending it to publishers or agents—or I can put that off and self-publish. But even self-publishing involves trying to get someone to read your work, and risks rejection. (Update: the proposal was sent before posting.)

I don’t relish rejection, and I assume that you don’t either. But sometimes it’s necessary to take a chance, and if you are uncomfortable with rejection, as I am, it can be useful to look at what there is to celebrate about rejection.

As a writer, rejection presupposes an accomplishment: I can’t have a work rejected without finishing that work--without making a commitment to giving a draft to someone else (and thus a commitment to stop working on the darn thing). I absolutely should celebrate finishing both the draft and the proposal. Writing an entire book draft is a real accomplishment for me—something I’ve managed to do only twice before on my own (counting my dissertation in addition my book on dissertation writing)—and so, finishing a draft of a new book is something to celebrate, and finishing a book proposal even more so, because I find the book proposal much harder to write than the book. The proposal is all about acceptance/rejection. When I’m working on the book, it’s about helping people, which feels good. When I’m working on the proposal, it’s about getting my book accepted which doesn't feel nearly as good. Anyway, the proposal is finished (and now sent). I’m not going to rework it any more. It’s going to fly or crash on the merit of what is there now.

The well-known principle “you can’t win if you don’t play,” is important here. But the principle presupposes that you can play: in the metaphorical poker game of manuscript submission, I have something to ante into the pot.  I certainly ought to celebrate that good fortune (not really good fortune, but the product of a lot of consistent effort over several years). I already believe in the value of working hard, so I don’t begrudge that past effort, but rather view the effort with some pride, even if no one ever reads my book.

I don’t entirely look forward to reworking my proposal for a new agent or publisher, so that aspect of possible rejection is not awesome. But the book process would hardly be over, even if I had a great response on my proposal. Getting accepted would almost certainly carry with it some specific requests for revision and for other information. The publication process would eventually require proofreading, too. So rejection doesn’t radically change the necessary effort. And, realistically, I like writing as work: it’s often frustrating, but I feel that the more I work at it, the greater are the rewards in proportion to the effort.

Submitting a proposal—whether accepted or rejected—is not the end of the process, but it is a real landmark. If bringing a book to publication is a road race, this is a significant milepost—it’s the halfway point, at least. And just as I would celebrate the halfway point in a road race, I can celebrate hitting this mark.

If you worry about how your work will be accepted, I understand. I worry about how my work is accepted, too. It’s natural. But rejection is only part of a larger picture, and in that larger picture—the picture of a person working on a piece of writing—the rejection is a real sign of accomplishment. That’s what I told myself as I geared up to hit “send” on my proposal. 

Now that I have sent the e-mail, a difficult period of waiting for a response begins. To help support my mood through that wait, I’m going to celebrate my accomplishments so far.

Be Willing to Get It Wrong, part 1: Ironic results

On Friday, as part of my new “Dave’s Dissertation Advice,” video series, I posted a video on being willing to get it wrong.  The main idea of the video, I suppose, was a take on the fairly common “You can’t win if you don’t play” idea.  I was talking about the willingness to make mistakes, the willingness to experiment and explore, and the willingness to invite criticism, even if the criticism is negative.

Ironically, the video itself was rejected, in a way.  And that’s OK—I didn’t have a lot riding on that video, in terms of my ego, and the rejection wasn’t one that was emotionally challenging. The rejection I received was that when I tried to use the video as the basis of advertising on facebook, it was rejected because the image had too much text in it. To make a point about being willing to make mistakes, I purposefully introduced or allowed possible roughnesses into the video, one of which was the significant use of  text alongside the video/audio. This text showed up in the thumbnail of the video, and, as a result, when I posted it to facebook, the image included text. Hence the “too much text in image” rejection.

The effort that went into the video wasn’t wasted, even though it received a rejection for one of the specific purposes I had intended (advertising on facebook). The video is available to people who might be interested, and a friend of mine gave me a suggestion that was useful. And I learned in the process.  All in all, it may have been rejected, but it’s no disaster.

The effect of having a work rejected can be more severe than the impact I faced, but a large part of the impact of having a work rejected is the emotional impact of that rejection, and if you approach feedback well, its negative emotional impact can be limited. Beyond the emotional impact, it’s very rare that a rejected work will cause any problems—rejected works are generally ignored after being rejected. For a graduate student, the risk of any harm beyond the emotional is pretty slight—professors don’t generally kick students out of programs for doing inadequate work, unless that’s a years-long pattern. A bad draft might make a professor less willing to help you in the future, but that’s a problem remedied by writing a better draft to follow up the weak one—especially a draft that incorporates the professor’s critiques.

The basic “you can’t win if you don’t play” trope is really a crucial one for graduate students who often get stuck “working” on a project rather than completing a draft to give to their professors. In the dissertation writing phase, in particular, students are given the freedom to continue working independently, with minimal need to produce concrete works.  

One cookie now or two cookies later

Yesterday I was talking with my friend about some difficult issues he was having related to raising his son, and in particular with respect to a complex decision where there are clear pros and cons on either side of the equation. On a certain level, of course, it's laughable to ask me about raising a child, since I've none of my own. But philosophy is philosophy; some wisdom is always worthy.

When we were talking, I was thinking of him and his son just as people like those I often help--which is to say graduate students. He's a smart guy, but his son is eight, so you can't quite talk through ideas the same way with an eight year old. "But there has to be a simplified parallel that he would understand," I finally claimed.

And there is; it's a classic one. I think that Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence says something to the effect that those who, as children, choose two cookies later over one now, tend to be more successful as adults--successful in most measurable dimensions, in terms of career, social life, etc. I don't know if Goleman's assertion is true, but it is clear to me that the one cookie now vs. two later is a model for many of the things we face in life.

My friend was concerned with some issues of social responsibility, but also with his son's social community, too. He felt a conflict between large-scale social responsibility, and a desire to care for his son and to give him opportunities. Two different value systems were coming into conflict.

As I was out running today, I was thinking that the one cookie now vs. two cookies later paradigm is a good one for talking about the complexity of issues, and for showing how we can be faced with questions whose answer is not clear, or which inevitably involve some sort of compromise.

Suppose you're offered one cookie now vs. two later. One good first question might be "how much later?" If you only have to wait one minute for the two cookies, it seems like a no-brainer. Similarly, if you are going to wait a decade to get the two cookies, it seems pointless not to take the one right now. Somewhere in between these two extremes, we might logically presume that there is a point where it is hard to decide.

In exploring the complexity of the question, we can also note that the reward offered for waiting (the two cookies) can be altered--maybe it's three cookies later, or ice cream and a cookie later instead of just a cookie now.

These are terms, I think, that an eight year old could understand. On the other hand, getting an eight year old to see the point, and to accept it may be unlikely. After all, this is difficult for adults to manage.
Some decisions are like the one cookie now vs. two cookies in one minute decision: it's easily made. Most are not.

When we're writing, or when we're managing a project, or when we're trying to decide whether to support an institution (like my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley), we're faced with questions that are much more closely balanced. Yes, the University builds weapons of mass destruction; it also harbors and supports some very good progressive thought. Yes, the university sports programs are problematic in many ways; they also do some good, and buying tickets to one game won't really make a difference. Yes, you want your son to be able to have communal activities with friends, including ones that you enjoyed as a youth; you also want your son to be able to make socially responsible decisions that promote peace, justice, etc.
Or, to take this out of the realm of my friend and into the realm of the writer: we might offer this similar paradigm:
shitty draft now vs. good draft later. How long do you wait for the good draft? A shitty draft now may be far superior--if, for example, you have been told you must submit something immediately or be dropped from your program. Sure, at such a moment it would be nice to have a good draft, but often we feel that the draft we currently have is a shitty one.
The answer is never clear. Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, once wrote that a bad letter in good time was better than a good letter late (though he said it more elegantly than my awkward paraphrase, I have lost the original quote and the reference to my source--I think it was from a collection of his letters). But if you submit a bad draft to a publisher, you may be rejected out of hand, hurting your future chances, while waiting longer would have meant a better reception.

Sadly there is no clear answer to many of the problems that we struggle with (which may help explain why we struggle with them). I believe that the more clearly we can see what is involved in choosing the different alternatives, the better we can make a choice that will serve us well.

Well, the logic sounds ok, but I wouldn't want to try to convince anyone of the wisdom herein--least of all an eight year old.

Wouldn't it be great if...? (2)

There are, of course, so many things that would be great. Some of them don't work out the way we hope. We try to write an idea out, or we show our written work to someone, or whatever. We don't get the result we were hoping for. And not only that, but we do get a clear indication that the thing we thought would be great, isn't going to work out.

It's great to have dreams. It's also important to be able to let go of the dreams that have failed. Not to let go of dreams generally--life would be rather awful if we had no hopes for the future--but to recognize that some dream won't work out: maybe that experiment you tried didn't give useful results, or the argument you presented turned out to have a flaw, or the structure you chose didn't please your professor, or whatever. What do you do then?

Wouldn't it be great if we could always look on those efforts as learning opportunities instead of as failures or referenda on our personal character?

We have to try new things if we are to grow and keep from avoiding the problems of the past. Wouldn't it be great if we could remember that? It's hard to let go of a dream that has failed, but better to let go of it and pursue another dream. Which is one good reason to exercise our "wouldn't it be great if..."

I'm thinking of this subject of keeping focused on the positive future outcomes partly because I have not been getting outcomes that I want in some of my efforts, but more because I was talking with a writer who was concerned about some of the outcomes she was getting in her work process.

On one level, I had looked at her outcomes and tried to see the positive in them. On another level I had looked at the outcomes as indications of new perspectives to examine and new practices to experiment with.

I wonder, actually, whether this might be the interface between two imaginative exercises: on the one hand there is the speculative "wouldn't it be great if", and on the other the retrospective spin of "isn't it great that..." where we take the presumed bad outcome (e.g., "I was rejected") and spin it into "isn't great that I was rejected." Now that's an imaginative exercise that takes some skill. It's said that Edison, faced with the failure of another experimental light bulb, would say that he had learned another way not to make a light bulb. That is positive spin: not "I failed in my goal" but "I learned something that will forward me toward my goal."

Wouldn't it be great if we could exercise our ability to re-imagine our past in terms of "isn't it great if."

I realize that I have reached a high degree of uncritical optimism here. While I do believe in the value of what I have said above, I recognize that the "wouldn't it be great if" exercise can't be all we use to think about the world.

In the spirit of the post, I include the lyrics to a classic Monty Python song.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

Some things in life are bad,
They can really make you mad,
Other things just make you swear and curse,
When you're chewing life's gristle,
Don't grumble,
Give a whistle
And this'll help things turn out for the best.
And...

Always look on the bright side of life.
Always look on the light side of life.

If life seems jolly rotten,
There's something you've forgotten,
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
When you're feeling in the dumps,
Don't be silly chumps.
Just purse your lips and whistle.
That's the thing.
And...

Always look on the bright side of life.
Always look on the right side of life,

For life is quite absurd
And death's the final word.
You must always face the curtain with a bow.
Forget about your sin.
Give the audience a grin.
Enjoy it. It's your last chance, anyhow.
So,...

Always look on the bright side of death,
Just before you draw your terminal breath.

Life's a piece of shit,
When you look at it.
Life's a laugh and death's a joke it's true.
You'll see it's all a show.
Keep 'em laughing as you go.
Just remember that the last laugh is on you.
And...

Always look on the bright side of life.
Always look on the right side of life.