When Persistence is Futile

November 17th, 2009

It’s been a rejection kind of day for some friends of mine. A day where the why-am-I-doing-this-when-I-don’t-have-to succubus sits on your shoulder cooing softly. That’s true, noxious harpy, you say as you brush her onto the ground. But it’s also true that I am resilient, and stamp on this maggot of malevolence – silencing her – but only for the moment, because like some hideous science fiction creation, she will be back.

To persist in the face of constant rejection does take resilience, (or a delusional personality). It is part of the writer’s job specification – the resilience that is. It goes with the territory, as does verbal abuse if you operate phones in a call centre, or untimely death if you are a pirate in the South China Sea. But when does persistence tip over into delusion? When do you hang up your keyboard and acknowledge that you gave it your best and it just wasn’t your time?

To succeed at anything, a little encouragement is essential. A little reward that affirms you are on the right path. This is why writers pore over every rejection letter and analyse every word, as a seer examines chicken entrails, looking for a tiny scrap of encouragement. Look, you say triumphantly, they say there is no room on their lists at the moment. At the moment! Which must mean that one day they will have room and I should submit again! Or, the full stop is after ‘ridiculous’, which must mean that they like ‘ridiculous’ – just not at the moment.

These rejections are easier to take when one has good travelling companions. A camaraderie among writers, born of empathy, can ease the worst of pains. Your pals say the agent is a ‘c**t’ who has the sensibility of a shopping mall designer because anyone can see that your work is brilliant, original and grammatically perfect. Or everyone gets out the cheap plonk and shreds the whole modern publishing industry, accusing them of dumbing down the population at large at the behest of Big Capital who just want a bunch of mindless consumers to buy Dan Brown at the checkout for $9.99.

But one day that letter will come and you’ll know. I live on a large block of land. The subsoil has a depth of around one centimetre; it’s lashed by winds straight off the hot Australian interior and baked by an unforgiving sun. When I moved here I had the urge to grow vegetables, a strong urge powered by some primal force within. I had heritage seeds that I nursed along. I bucketed water to my vegetable garden during summer water restrictions when using hoses was banned. I composted everything that wasn’t nailed down. Bags and bags and bags of manure, sheep poo, mushroom compost, water saving crystals, chook poo and home made soups of all of the above were lavished on my vegetable garden. I built tomato trellises, bamboo tepee’s for runner beans and spread straw mulch around everything.

After ten years of failure I now buy all my vegetables from the shop. The idea of vegetable gardening produces spasms of nausea - and a harsh cackle occasionally when others wax lyrical about their vegetal triumphs. Every year, EVERY YEAR, birds and insects would take their cut from my garden. Weather extremes extorted another major cut. Plants failed to flower, or there was not enough water to plump up the vegetables, and then some sort of mildew would move in and do its thing and I’d be left with two zucchini and a handful of silver beet to show for a whole seasons work.

It was a crushing, soul destroying experience and I’m still astonished I persisted for so long. I had resilience, optimism and the knowledge gleaned from a thousand Gardening Australia’s. Now I just eat vegetables, I don’t want to know where they come from – because it hurts too much.

One day I may feel that way about writing. I hope not.

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Categories: general, on writing | Tags: myths, writing