The brain is a greedy organ*. I heard once that Einstein used the same energy when he was thinking hard that a marathon runner would be using about mile 25.
I am thinking a lot these days. I am revising curriculum on the fly because my tiny writing class needs to become a more muscular group, and I am grading their essays and trying to give them specific writing advice—actually all sorts of advice.
At the same time I am writing a story. It is not ready to be submitted, but it has undergone enormous revision. When I butcher four or five thousand words out of this long story, write a thousand new words, and then butcher out another thousand to make room for them; when I rethink how the story should end and what, perhaps it means; and when I allow myself to become distracted enough that I risk killing that darling at the beginning of my novel (a very different project), which I am trying to find representation for . . . I need to take a nap.
My exhaustion is not physical, but it is real. I have been thinking. And all my thoughts are about what to put on the page.
This year I set an unusual writing goal for myself. I would like to plan on publications, but acceptance for publication is primarily the choice of editors. I have no control about what is published, other that to submit work for consideration. All I can do is send work out. So a more reasonable goal is to set a number of submissions. A friend of mine, in her effort to gain tenure as a college writing professor, set a goal of having 100 submissions out at all times for a year. That sounds admirable but insane to me. One hundred? I have been paying attention for a long time and have read many, many—in fact, an astounding number of—journals, and I have found 104 to put on my list. There are close to 4,000 I might consider, but even of those on my list, there are perhaps a couple dozen that really interest me. In the past, I have tried to keep at least 8 submissions out at a time. Sometimes I go for double digits.
The entire process of submitting work is work, and mass submissions also require that I have a lot of work “ready for publication” (see above). And there is that word “submit.”
At some point toward the end of 2017, I read about a writer whose goal was to have 100 rejections. That is pretty smart, I thought. Sneaky too, since in order to have 100 rejections, I would need at least 100 submissions over the course of the year. In 2017, I had 78 submissions—close—so I thought about this and decided it was totally doable.
Counting rejections also has the advantage of giving my some tiny advance in my record-keeping each time an editor sends me a note that says, “I liked the quality of the prose, but overall the narrative didn’t quite win me over and I’m going to pass on this story for [our magazine]. I wish you best of luck finding the right market for it and hope that you’ll continue to keep us in mind in the future.”
Well, that story really does needs more work. I sent it out too early, and I should have asked a friend reread it. I should have read it aloud to my husband. But . . .
But good news, halfway through May, I already have 45 rejections! Whoopee me! I am going to meet my rejection goal!
The bad news? My brain is completely worn out. Wiped out. Soggy noodle. Maybe I should go take a nap? Or two. Or a good night’s sleep?
Tomorrow I will read that story aloud and do the needful.
IMPERFECT PATIENCE 