Missing Deadlines, Rejection, and Other Meaningless Things
Defining a consistent writing life
Sometimes you miss a deadline.
Maybe it’s for a fellowship or residency that is the perfect opportunity. Maybe it’s for a writing class. Maybe it’s for an agent or editor. Maybe it’s just for yourself, and now you feel completely behind on the whole scope of the project. Missing that one deadline puts the completion of the entire book late, and then even later, than you want it to be.
If you’re coming off of a period of good productivity, missing a deadline can be particularly devastating. The new ‘consistent writer’ identity you’ve built is presented with new evidence that you are not, in fact, consistent.
Except that missing a deadline isn’t evidence of anything at all. Just like rejection isn’t evidence of anything, either.
When you get rejected from a lit mag, publisher, or agent, it would be pretty illogical to immediately assume it has anything to do with the quality of your work or your preparedness as a writer. I’m not saying this as a gentle placation — it’s the truth of the industry. To use rejection as a measurement of the success of your writing would not give you an accurate reading. Your close friends, readers, and trusted mentors will be far more precise in helping you hone your skills and shore up anything that’s loose.
So, when you receive a rejection, it’s not worth placing it in an evidence folder and delivering it to whichever mental department is in charge of your writing self-image. It’s a null data point. It doesn’t contribute anything meaningful.
What’s meaningful are acceptances, personalized rejections, and sincere encouragement. All of these are valuable pieces of evidence when you are building up a clearer idea of who you are as a writer.
Let’s go back to writing consistently. Every time you write, you should contribute that as evidence to the idea that you are a consistent writer. Because it is evidence! Every finished chapter, every new page, every addition to an outline is a clear contribution to your body of work. It’s an action that a writer takes.
Missing a deadline, or not writing one day, doesn’t mean anything at all. Not writing is a neutral, resting state. You have not failed to achieve anything. You are existing as a human. You are existing as a writer, as long as you can believe that all of your past and future writing still matters, even if writing doesn’t get done on a particular day.
I didn’t finish an essay by this past Tuesday morning, which is normally my newsletter deadline. Does this Tuesday matter? Nope! Today does.
If I let my disappointment in myself last for more than a few seconds (I mean, the shame does have to appear and make itself known, but it doesn’t have to stay and get comfortable) I would probably finish out the week in the identity of an ‘inconsistent writer’ and allow myself to not write anything else. To try again next Tuesday.
Instead, I’m typing this from the passenger’s seat while my partner and I drive up to Maine. Because I’m still in that carryover of being a consistent writer, that attitude wins out over any recent missed deadline.
My latest book is a record of this writing practice. It’s not a book of three years of missing my self-imposed newsletter deadlines (although there was plenty of inconsistency!). It’s three years of writing again, and being interested in the factors that got me writing again.
Having clarity about your sources of evidence for your writing identity allows you to navigate the curveballs that the outside world throws at you. Discouraging feedback, rejections, and missing deadlines are not quite as charged and overwhelming. They’re just things that happen.
The only time you should make edits to your idea of who you are as a writer, is when you write.