The Writers Coin

I have a plain manila folder on my desk that’s stuffed with 76 pieces of paper. They are all from different parts of the country. They are of all kinds of different sizes but they all have one thing in common.

Each one is a badge of failure.

The folder’s front cover reads “Rejections” and I’ve been adding to it over a four-year span.

How it Works

When I write a story or an essay I think is interesting, I polish it up, have someone I trust read it, and then I go over it again once last time.

In all, this probably takes a couple of months.

Then I stick it into an envelope with a SASE or I submit it online and wait. A month or so later I get the self addressed stamped envelope I made out to myself a couple of months ago and open it up. It’s magical—like mailing yourself a letter from the past.

They say things like:

• Thanks but no thanks
• We liked it but didn’t have room for it
• We didn’t even read it because we’re so busy
• Please try again sometime
• The intern didn’t like it or didn’t “get it”
• People like you are what make this publication possible

In the end, they all mean the same thing: I failed.

My attempts at getting published have been foiled a total of 76 times (multiple times for the same story). I had relegated this rejection folder to the bottom of a pile of papers in my night stand until I caught a glimpse of it the other day.

Wow, I thought, I haven’t opened this up in a LONG time.

And it hit me: I haven’t added to it in over two years—I haven’t failed in over two.

I’m disappointed.

Failure to Fail

Without putting myself out there, I’m not going to fail. Sure, that’s technically right. But it also means I’m not even trying.

It’s like a baseball player that goes up to the plate and doesn’t take his bat off his shoulder. Sure, you might get a walk every now and then, but your batting average will always be zero.

Boring and lame.

After seeing the folder and realizing how long it’s been since I’ve failed, I feel motivated to add more rejection slips to it.

If I’m going to fail, I’m going to grip that bat as hard as I can, step towards the pitcher, and swing as hard as I can.

I may whiff a 77nd time, but I’ll go down swinging.

Michael Lewis is an awesome writer. Among my favorite books are Moneyball, Liar’s Poker, and The Blind Side.

But all the books aside, he’s written some of the best newspaper/magazine pieces I’ve ever read. From NFL kickers and Cuban baseball, to the craziness of the financial crisis.

The man can write about about anything and make it interesting and entertaining (á la David Foster Wallace).

Which brings me to the Michael Lewis Challenge.

From time to time, I’ve pitched myself as the “Michael Lewis of the personal finance world.” By that I meant that I could make anything really interesting.

Now it’s time to put my money where my mouth is, and I need your help.

Send me a topic, any topic, that has to do with money/investing/personal finance, and I’ll try to make it interesting. If I can’t, I’ll be stripped of the title I so vainly bestowed upon myself.

Sounds like a deal?

Just email me your ideas and if I get more than one (thanks mom!) I’ll run a poll or something to see which one people would like to challenge me to make interesting and entertaining.

Pick something you feel is really boring so we can all try to have some fun with it!

There’s an awesome piece in this month’s Poets & Writer’s issue by Benjamin Percy called “Go the Distance.”

In it, he talks about how Rocky Balboa is his role model when it comes to persistence and never giving up. I’d love to put the whole article up here for everyone to read, but I’m sure that wouldn’t be cool with the good people over at Poets & Writers. It’s all about how writing is so hard and easy to quit, and never quitting is one of the qualities he is proud of.

Towards the end he shares the story of a short story he wrote and got 39 rejections.

Thirty nine!

But he really believed in the story and kept working on it, sending it out, and polishing it. Eventually, the Antioch Review (a pretty big deal), published it and Salman Rushdie (a huge deal) wound up listing it as one of the 100 Distinguished Stories of 2008 in The Best American Short Stories.

Percy closes his story:

Remember that story the next time you’re feeling low at the keyboard or thumbing open a letter addressed “Dear Writer.” And then pop the Rocky soundtrack into your stereo, tape your knuckles and wrists, ram your hands into gloves, and step into that ring ready to last twelve rounds against Apollo Creed. Go the distance.

Amen!

Over the weekend, a friend and I were sitting at the bar having a beer and he asked me if I had written anything lately. He knows I’m passionate about writing fiction, but I couldn’t remember the last time he ever asked me if I’d written anything “recently.”

Sadly enough, the answer was no.

Then I felt compelled to explain myself. I mean—why haven’t I written anything lately? It probably has to do with losing focus, being lazy, and being busy at work.

But the real answer is that writing sucks.

It’s True—Writing Sucks

Writing is daydreaming for hours to come up with something decent to write about. It might sound like a great idea or a terrible idea, but you won’t know until you sit down and start writing it all out. And that sucks because you’re going to have to work really hard for a really long time to maybe realize that what you’re writing isn’t any good.

Sure, occasionally the creative gods will give you a break and you’ll have an “aha” moment—a story will materialize our of thin air without any effort at all. It’s rare, but it does happen. The only story I’ve ever written that won anything came to me in two and a half hours and required very little work after that. Those two and a half hours netted me $300—not too shabby.

Writing sucks because, typically, you’re going to put in a lot of work and get very little back in return—if anything at all. You’ll sit there and write for hours and hours, pages and pages, and it might turn out that no one will ever read it. I sometimes have to write 25 pages to get five pages that are any good. I try consoling myself that all great writers have to produce shitty first drafts to eventually come up with something good, but it doesn’t make it any easier.

So Why Write at All?

My friend was looking at me laughing the whole time and ranting about all of this. He looks at me and says: “Why are you torturing yourself like this then? No one is making you write, no one is forcing you. Just stop doing it already.”

Ah, but here comes the part where I tell you why I love to write: you get to create something new out of thin air and you get to discover things about yourself you didn’t know before. Writing may be hard, but it’s one of the most rewarding things I can think of doing when it all goes right.

There’s a reason why everyone isn’t a writer—it’s hard (and there’s no money in it). But there’s a reason those of us that do keep on doing it: when you wind up creating something really good, there’s no better feeling in the world.