Right before Christmas, I received my fourth agent rejection letter on Maharishiville. It wasn’t a horrible letter, as rejections go. Though the agent felt it lacked the tension and momentum to keep her turning the pages, she liked the premise and found the story entertaining and the lead character likable. But as I finished reading the letter, the first thought in my over-philosophical head was, “Maybe I should be done with this whole novel-writing thing.” Maybe I’m simply not supposed to be doing this. According to The Secret , if I’m on the right life path things should come easily. And in general, in my life things have, indeed, come pretty easy. Perhaps this is a sign I’m not meant to be a novelist.
I know this goes against the philosophy of Try, Try Again and Winners Never Quit. I mean, four rejections is nothing in the world of writing. Some of the best-selling novels were rejected several dozen times before getting published. And life coach Martha Beck says in her column “The Woman Who Fell to Earth” (Oprah, December 2007) that the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that the successful people fail more. They keep trying, learning from their failures.
But in Beck’s very next column ,”Know When to Fold ‘Em” (Oprah, January 2008), she says that “Quitters win and winners quit.” It seems that studies support the notion that “the ability to quit easily makes us healthier — and wealthier — than does leechlike tenacity.” People who respond to dejection by quitting have fewer health problems, less psychological stress and often are financially better off.
And so, as usual, I find myself in a quandary. To which philosophy do I subscribe? Try, Try Again or Oh Well, I Tried … ? If success in novel writing is a matter of wanting it so badly that quitting is not an option, perhaps I simply don’t want it enough (or deserve it). Which brings me to the inevitable passion-of-life question: If this isn’t it, what IS?
On a lighter note…
Recent purchasing indecision: Whether to buy a day-per-page calendar journal or a week-per-spread one. Unable to decide, I bought them both.
