Rejection sucks. Radio silence sucks more. But this is the life when a writer is breaking into a new genre and new markets.
Now that the publishing industry is rebounding—perhaps not to its original state, but a new, more profitable normal—I’m jumping into the deep end of the publishing pool, where the big, popular kids swim. I’m taking the whopping ideas that I followed for alternative weeklies nearly a decade ago and shooting for the moon, which in my case happens to be where The Atlantic, Smithsonian and New York Magagine reside. I’m also digging into my personal experiences, scribbling essays in dark bars while drinking rye Manhattans with Kurt Cobain blasting from the speakers.
And I’m I heaven. My brain is primed for new ideas. Brilliant sentence structures in the books and essays and articles I’m reading jump off the page and lodge in my chest. I’m like an over-stimulated English major who finds poetry in graffiti or a 16-year-old’s text messages.
Obnoxious. And I know it.
Maybe that’s the biggest reason I’m getting rejections and radio silence. I’m too romantic about my work; it’s too precious to me, too personal.
At 48 years old, with three books and 15 years of freelancing under my belt, I should know better. I do know better. But still this feels like a rite of passage, a bridge I must cross. Because in this way, I’m a newbie again, and we newbies—at whatever age—can sometimes be idealistic, romantic and, yes, obnoxious. (Well, I’ll own that last adjective for myself.) Permit me this bit of romanticism: That’s the beauty of freelancing. We can reinvent ourselves—become essayists or investigative journalists or listicle writers. And in that way, we have something in common with our poet brethren and sistren. Our destiny is ours.
At least until tomorrow morning, when I’ll be up at 5:30 a.m. to edit sixth-grade math lessons to pay the bills.