When competition defeats me
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| Bruised. Photo by Christa Loman, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 |
To be a writer is to invite defeat. Defeat in competitions, in publications, in the will and drive to continue. I know because in my quest to receive 100 rejections in 2016, I am already feeling black and blue at thirteen measly ones and wondering if I should invest in a more robust liquor cabinet to get through the year.
It's not just rejections of submissions, either. I feel the sting every time a fellow writer announces a publication or a fellowship, an article or an award. Doesn't matter if they're short story writers like I am or science-medical scribes appearing in peer-reviewed journals to which I have never aspired. The punch lands on my jaw all the same because they, at least on the face of it, have what I want: recognition that their art has merit.
In my deepest moments of self-pity, I regard myself as a Rock 'Em Sock 'Em robot of futility -- a blank figurine pinned within a ring I wonder why I asked to enter, caught unaware when the next slug connects and my head pops off my shoulders. But after my head drops back and I pause to observe my plastic fortress, I see it's not that intimidating. Only a flimsy rope keeps me from the wider, woolly world -- the very world I say I want, yet am scared to inhabit.
Because ultimately it's about fear, isn't it? Fear of being outpaced and outclassed. Fear of overestimating my potential. Fear of not leaving a faint smudge of immortality somewhere in the notebook of human civilization, all because I thought the ring real.
Look at how cheaply the rope is made, though, how artificial its construct. On closer examination, I start to see what sets me apart from the Red Rocker or Blue Bomber. Unlike them, I have agency. No one is pushing joysticks beneath me; I can stand there and jab at unfeeling air, or I can leave the ring to try punching above my weight.
Consider these words of wisdom from Colum McCann, which recently rocked and socked me in a different (and more productive) way:
If you’re writing to beat someone else then you’re writing with invisible ink. Watch it disappear. Instead keep counsel with dignity. [...] This does not mean that you don’t want to be better than another writer -- being better is part of the job. But be better in a better way. In a way that hurts. In a way that forces you into competition with yourself. If you’re going to throw a punch try your own jaw first.
So with 87 rejections ahead of me, I am not aiming to win faster. I am vowing to fight harder.
Prayer #299: Rope-a-Dope
Lay me flatter than my own low standards. Launch me higher than my timid goals. When I'm on the ropes, shove me through them, and when I hit the floor on the other side, expectorated into a new and limitless arena, raise my arm in jubilant victory, for I will have already vanquished the toughest opponent I will ever face.
Amen.