Not-Floundering Friday #4: On Goals. And Not Letting Them Kill You.

Cold Truths, Survival Tactics, and Warm Blankets for Surviving (and Loving) the Writing Life

When I was twenty-four, and entering my last year of grad school, I sent what I hoped would be my first published novel to the first 5 agents on the ranked-by-preference list I had spent over a year building. To my astonishment (and, eventually, regret. Sort of. Or maybe not. Agents are a whole other set of posts), agent #3 on my list responded really quickly and took me on.

I couldn’t believe it. Partly, I think now, because at some level I knew I wasn’t there, yet. Didn’t have the book, yet.

(Is it still impostor syndrome if you really are an impostor?)

But I let this guy convince me (and maybe himself) that I was ready. It felt like the culmination of the beginning of my career. The beginning of the rest of it. Already, that year, I’d finished my MFA, completed that first book, and gotten well into a second. Published a couple stories in tiny mags, mostly associated with programs at schools I attended. The night I got the agent’s call, I actually sat down and set myself a goal.

I didn’t write it anywhere. Thank God. I don’t think I even said it aloud. Not even to myself. But I set it. Pinned it in my brain like a banner atop a locker room door. Something I could jump up and tap everyday on the way to my desk to pen the next masterpiece.

At the time, that goal felt not just achievable, but for all intents and purposes already achieved. It was all happening. Right? That heady rush I was sensing… obviously, that was momentum.

First book by thirty.

That was the goal I set. (Most of it, anyway. I mean, there was the Pulitzer by thirty-five codicil. But even if I actually believed that was going to happen, I wasn’t stupid enough to pin Pulitzer by thirty-five anywhere even I could see it).

First book by thirty, and then I’d know for sure I was a real writer.

I didn’t get there. Didn’t, in fact, publish a single other piece of fiction by thirty. Had left that agent— I’m not even sure he noticed— and not found another. Had finished three more books, none of which anyone will ever see or should see. I’d published a bunch of rock music and arts criticism in reputable alternative newspapers, even made a sort of living doing that. None of which reassured me at all.

Because— and this is the thing, the reason for the sage advice I am offering in this post— that goal I’d set? Banner I’d pinned? No matter what I tried, or wrote, or even got into print…I couldn’t rip the damn thing down.

Couldn’t forget it was there, or cover it up.

First book by thirty. Which did not happen.

And because it didn’t, I really started to believe I was kidding myself. Worse, I started to accept that.

And because I’d started to accept that, I almost stopped writing. Tried to, I think. If I’d been able to come up with anything else, professionally (other than teaching, which I already loved, and already knew wouldn’t be enough by itself), I would have gone off and done it.

When I did sell my first piece of post-grad school fiction, at thirty-three, it felt like a fluke. Blind luck. Cheating, even. I didn’t know yet that most publications were going to feel like that. Probably are like that, to varying degrees.

When I sold The Snowman’s Children, at thirty-five, it felt like…

Well, what’s most important is what it didn’t feel like: proof of anything, one way or another.

Neither triumph nor reprieve.

A reward, sure, for sticking with it in the face of everything my life seemed to be telling me. A confirmation, yes, because that book— my fifth that I’d finished— was good. I knew it was good before I showed it to a single soul.

Which is so, so not the same thing as knowing anyone would buy it. Or how it would get reviewed. Or whether anyone would read it.

What’s the takeaway from this anecdote, which almost every writer I know has a version of?

No. NO. The point is not “Stick with it, and you’ll get there.” I still don’t even know where “there” is, let alone if I’ve reached it or accidentally passed through it without realizing.

The point is, set goals only about things you can control.

Keep writing, for as long as it means something to you. That’s a good one.

Keep reminding yourself that it does mean something to you, and take pleasure in that.

Keep sending out anything you finish, because flukes and blind luck can’t find you if they can’t see you.

Set those kinds of goals. Then meet them.

On the day I received my box from Carroll & Graf with the first Snowman’s Children hardbacks, I was in my apartment alone with my son, who might have been three. Putting the box on the table, I lifted him away from the game we’d been playing, set him on my lap, and opened the box.

“Sid,” I said, holding the book in front of us. “Do you know what this is?”

“The Snowman’s Children,” he said immediately. “By Daddy.” (That right then…was that There? I think it might have been). Then he said, “I want apple juice,” bumped the book aside, and hopped down.

So I got us apple juice. Left the book in the box. And sometime that night, when he was in bed, with whatever I had left of that’s day allotment of energy and brain, I pulled myself back to my desk and got about the business of meeting probably the only helpful writing goal there is:

Writing the next one.

(Not-Floundering Fridays will be off next week, but will return 9/30)