“Since I was a child, I was always making things. My mind is always making things. [It] just continues to become more and more of a survival mechanism as the years move on. It’s the way I process all the things in my life.”
That’s Jon Batiste narrating the opening of American Symphony, a Netflix documentary about his creative process and personal life. On-screen, Batiste sits on a snowy, rocky riverbank with his melodica. First, he seems to do some deep breathing or meditating, then he plays a string of notes. Sorrowful. Moving. A flock of geese overhead. Dozens of unruly and perfect notes across a staff.
Earlier this fall, I wrote about creating (i.e. making) as a cure for what ails me, including the depression I can’t seem to shake. Like Batiste says, making things is a survival mechanism. I’ve turned to it time and time again.
And yet, this doesn’t mean creating isn’t also painful. And frightening. As writers and artists, we accept this as a package deal. When mashed up as one big fat abstraction, the gains and pains of creating — the ups and downs, fa la la la la la la la la — seem digestible, confront-able, doable. Even desirable. But do we ever actually experience that mash up? Both at once. I don’t think I do.
There’s a romance to creating. O, tormented artists, how we sacrifice! And triumph! We *get* to do this work we love. And yet, I spend lots of time on the outs with this work. Ghosted. Storming out of the restaurant. Love *or* dysfunction. Never both. And it sinks me. Stops me in my tracks. The joy is quite fleeting, but the painful side digs in and makes itself at home. Lazes around on my couch with my snacks. Steals the covers at night. Leaves messes in the kitchen.
I took the bathroom selfie above a few weeks before Christmas. I was at a local brewery for a lunch and beer break in the middle of a day I’d set aside for holiday shopping and prep. I intended it as a “proof of life” kinda thing — here I am, along for the bumpy road to the holidays and still kickin’.
Instead, when I shared it on Instagram, it morphed into a “not dead yet” claim about my creative life. Despite zero acceptances in 2023 (ZERO!), writing and rejection haven’t killed me. Not yet. For the caption to go with the photo, I wrote, “This is what trying to be unstoppable looks like.” It became a reflection on remaining upright despite dozens of consecutive rejections.
Since posting the photo, I’ve considered whether or not I actually feel unstoppable. It seemed like wishful thinking. Like pep talk. Like dreamy brain snack for dark times. I’m not sure I really believed it. But here I am — writing something.
It’s possible I couldn’t actually stop writing if I wanted to. It’s my way of being in the world. Still — here’s that pendulum — it’s wild and wildly painful to be an emerging writer over 50, comparing where I “should” (or could) be vs. where I am… sending around manuscript #3 and no book yet.
There’s a quote in American Symphony about this risk, about the possibility of failure. Batiste says, “You have to confront the brutal facts of the reality that you might not pull it off. But at the same time have unwavering faith. Completely unwavering faith. And you have to do both at the same time.”
Both at the same time. Both?
Alongside the pursuit of his vision for the symphony at Carnegie Hall, the documentary follows Batiste’s wife’s treatment for leukemia. Batiste is married to writer and artist Suleika Jaouad. I’d read Jaouad’s memoir Between Two Kingdoms years ago and actually found Batiste through Jaouad (not the other way around). In the documentary, Jaouad says, “We both see survival as its own kind of creative act. It’s what helps us alchemize the different things that come up in life and transform them into something useful and meaningful and even beautiful.”
It’s the same for me and, I imagine, so many of us. Our confusion, fears, traumas and illnesses are with us whether we create or not. It only makes sense to use our gifts to interrogate them and, when we’re lucky, find in them something we couldn’t have anticipated. Curiosity about our experiences can give us a glimpse of our power even as we feel powerless.
Both at the same time? Yes, both.
My umbrella writing goal for 2023 is to remind myself why I write in the first place, and it’s exactly what Jaouad says: transformation. She describes it as alchemy, and I like that. But my word for it is sorcery. Yes, I want publishing success. Badly. And I also want to live as a sorceress on the page and, by association, in my life.
It seems as though I send out a manuscript once every decade. So far, I’ve sent manuscripts to presses in the late 2000s, the mid-2010s and now, 2023-2024. So speedy! LOL These manuscripts have been entirely different from one another and, may I say, getting better. But at this rate, I’ll have a book… when?
As Batiste said, I might not pull it off.
So what’s the latest? The current manuscript, known affectionately as my Gertie manuscript, has been out in the world since late May. I’ve sent it to 28 presses and have heard back — all no’s — from 12 of those. There are new deadlines in the new year and throughout the winter/spring that I’ll also try to hit. This is what trying to be unstoppable looks like.
So far, my approach has been hands off, letting the draft manuscript ride without revision. That’s because I had a lot of self-inflicted drama around my second manuscript. I adjusted it with every rejection over a nearly 24-month period overlapping the years 2015, 2016 and 2017. It started as my MFA thesis and was unrecognizable when I walked away from it. With each rejection, I tried to guess at what may be holding it back. I chased and chased and grew to resent it. I can see now that it’s impossible to know where/how it was lacking based on the rejections. The process is subjective. No feedback is offered or expected.
As a reflex against chasing my own tail, I decided that attempt #3 would be the “take it or leave it” attempt, but I’m softening on that now. I still haven’t done any revisions on Gertie, but over the last several weeks I’ve made a list of questions worth exploring. Serendipitously, in the midst of this softening, I received an offer for a manuscript consultation from an editor at a press I admire. I quickly paid before I could change my mind, and it’s already on my calendar. I’m looking forward to hearing a fresh POV about the possibilities for when I decide to jump into revision.
Even so, it’s true I may not pull it off. There’s so much stacked against me at this point, at this age, etc., etc. In poetry, there’s so much stacked against all of us, to be honest. Prior to hearing Batiste’s phrasing — you may not pull it off — the possibility of failure felt like blunt force trauma, finality, a blow not worth getting up from. It felt like something best accepted to avoid risking anything further.
Instead, Batiste’s phrasing for the risk evokes questions. OK, it asks, so what about it? If failure, what next? It evokes a kind of freedom. Nothing left to lose. Gauntlet. Throw-down.
In response to “you may not pull it off,” something in me (though admittedly not all of me) says, “Watch me.”
Looking back, it’s easy to call 2023 the year I failed to get my manuscript published and the year I failed to get any of its newer poems published. It was the year I heard NO at every turn. What I seem to forget is that 2023 is also the year I finished the manuscript in the first place. I busted my ass over the first five or six months of 2023 to bring it home — writing new poems, doing dramatic revisions and imagining/re-imagining what I wanted the book to be. Even at this moment, when I may not pull it off, I’m really proud of the manuscript.
2023 is also the year I faced my first long-term depression in years. Though rejections do suck, it’s likely why this particular string of them stings so much. I’m still fighting that mood battle, but there are small signs I have some spark and fire left and that the light will win out. For example, this year I arrived at my current two-tone hair color (feisty!), decided to put jalapeno on everything and tried to sort out wtf I want to do (if anything) with art. (Answer: Stop getting in my own way.)
My plans for 2024? Sorcery and self care. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I’d like to end with gratitude for Batiste and Jaouad for being so vulnerable in front of the cameras. I’m grateful when creative people share both their art and their lives.
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