This week, I got a rejection email from a literary journal I’d submitted to in July.
We regret…
Best of luck placing it elsewhere.
I knew before I started submitting that rejections are part of the game. I’ve consoled others and meant what I said: Rejections mean you’re brave enough to put your work out into the world. This just wasn’t the right home for your piece. You will find the right home for your work.
It’s so easy to see the truth of those statements when I’m telling them to someone else. So much harder when the sting is in my own chest, when it’s my heart sinking, when it’s my brain that goes to the irrational place of not good enough.
Now, I should add that I only started submitting to literary journals recently (in July during The Sewanee Writers’ Conference) and that I’ve only submitted to half a dozen places, which is basically nothing in the grand scheme of things, but felt huge at the time. I’d started.
I know it’s a numbers game. The more you submit, the greater your odds of receiving an acceptance. At Sewanee, talking to writers who regularly submit and regularly get rejected and also regularly get accepted helped me see submitting as just part of the process. We write, we submit, we keep going. Intellectually I get this. Emotionally, it’s hard to detach.
When I got the email on Sunday, my husband and I were somewhere in South Carolina, stopped at a McDonald's to pee before resuming our drive to Atlanta. As I waited for Matt, I saw the email, then put my phone away. He came out, we left, and I said nothing.
During our road trip we’d been listening to I’ll be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara. As the audiobook resumed, she started in on a conversation between her and her husband about how with every dead-end in the case she doubts her work, her search, why she’s doing this at all.
Her husband buoys her efforts with a reference to Rocky and how you just have to keep showing up each day, keep putting in the effort. The author then draws a parallel to her husband’s own work as a stand-up comedian, getting back on stage night after night, dealing with bad crowds, working on jokes as he washed the dishes.
The lesson is a universal one: keep showing up.
This is part of a lesson that has come into my life over and over.
Show up. Put in the work. Release expectation.
It started in 2011 when I had a yoga teacher tell me about the sanskrit word abhyasa, meaning dedicated practice. I remember I wrote a piece about the word and how I learned to do a headstand. The word has never left me. (Side note: the essay wasn’t for anyone but me. I remember how strange I felt typing away for what I thought was no reason. I also remember how much it needed to come out.)
The way it was explained to me, abhyasa (practice) and vairagya (surrender) are like two wings of a bird. You need both to fly. You must put in the practice, but you can’t cling to expectation or result. The clinging will taint your practice and you’ll get nowhere (perfectionism). Likewise, if you surrender result without putting in any effort, nothing will get done (inertia).
Over the last eight years, I’ve seen this message in every aspect of my life: my yoga practice, my teaching, my relationships, my health, and most recently, my writing.
Show up. Put in the work. Release expectation.
Though they can all be a struggle at times, it’s the latter that’s the hardest for me. Expectation and I have a history—a string of disappointed birthdays, goals not achieved, calls not received, results that never came, etc.
I don’t know how to detach from hope. I don’t know if I want to. How can I show up and put in the work without the hope that the reason for all this effort will pay off?
As I just wrote that, I realized something. The reason for all of this effort….
The reason for yoga is not to get into a specific pose, it’s to connect with your body.
The reason for dating is not to get married, it’s to connect to another human.
The reason for writing is not to get published, it’s to connect to your yourself, your voice, your creativity.
Achieving the pose, saying I do, and getting a piece accepted are all results. They aren’t reasons.
Do I want to publish my poetry? Yes. But is it the only reason I write? Of course not. I wasn’t thinking of publishing when I was six and making up stories about Sylvester the Bird or when I was 26 and writing about kicking my body upside down into headstand.
I wrote because I wanted to, because I needed to, because I was connected to that part of me that had something to say.
Connection is the reason.
Connection is the goal.
And true connection never comes from forcing, or pushing, or demanding something look or act a certain way. Not in yoga, not in teaching, not in relationships, not in health, and not in writing. I can’t control which literary magazine editors (or more likely slush pile readers) connect with my work and which don’t. As I’ve heard other writers say, that’s none of my concern.
What is of my concern is that I keep showing up. That I keep putting in the work. That I keep releasing expectations (or at least try to).
A hundred miles or so after I got the rejection email, I told Matt about it. He didn’t quote Rocky, but he buoyed me in his own way. He put his hand on my leg and said I know it’s hard. I’m sorry. But I’m really proud of you.
And we drove home.
