About six or seven years ago I sat in a bar in Neukölln and me and my University mates would play a game, a sort of version of truth or dare. I can’t really remember the name of the game or its entire logic but I do remember that it had an itchy feel to it, a toxic psychological warfare some people love to use to gain power. However one of the questions went something like this: who do you think will do something completely different in five years? Who will make the most dramatic change? Who will stop being a writer?
We were all studying playwriting at that time or were actors or had some sort of artistic background. So the question really meant: who here is not a true artist? Who is merely dabbling? Who will not make it? And the guy that question was directed at, thought for a moment and then pointed at me, saying that I would probably be living on an eco-farm or being happy starting a family. It was a subtle not too subtle jab at my confidence. Something people say to shut other people down. A passive manipulation to remove people from their path of success.
Even though I could see that. Still it stung.
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The other day I received an email from someone I haven’t spoken to in over a decade. An old neighbour, someone I hung out with in my last year of high school but sort of lost touch with in the following years. It was a sweet message, congratulating me on my current success with the Kickstarter and crowdfunding my books and how I had been carving out my own path, reminding me how already at the age of seventeen I had written and directed a play in my school. He wondered if I could give him some advice, as he was now in his mid-thirties, realising that all of his grown-up life he hadn’t actually done what he wanted to do which was being a writer, too.
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It’s difficult to give people advice in general and in particular as well. Either because they’re not hearing you properly or because your advice isn’t actually helping. It is an unfortunate thing but most things you need to learn in life have to be experienced rather than be described to you.
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I have received countless rejections regarding my writing, I have cursed and cried and I definitely still hate one or two people who really were just trying to tear me down, so much so that I wrote a whole essay on that topic in my first book Things I Have Noticed. But I guess that’s the thing. Writing was always there for me regardless of the outcome: to process, to manage, to cope, to give voice to whatever I was going through. Most of which I will never even publish, but it lives in my diaries, as a private account of my life.
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Last year I received an email during a summer I can only describe with the words of the Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime: well, how did i get here?
Anyway. I loved this rejection because unlike other rejections it touched upon something, that is inherent in all rejections. Rejection is protection. For whatever reason one gets rejected, someone is essentially just saying: it’s not a good fit for them. Which means, it will not be a good fit for you either. Because you either need to learn more, get better and try again or you need to realise that you are better or better suited for something else. It doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to proceed elsewhere.
And it also doesn’t mean you need to reject yourself.
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Some people say being successful in anything is a matter of tenacity:
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Thomas Edison
And to a fair degree I believe that the reason why I am still doing this lies in the fact that I simply: Have not given up.
And to another degree it is because I have always enjoyed it. Some people call it talent when things sort of flow out of your hands with ease. And I know I have always had that. A natural disposition to sort myself out with words.
And I think there’s another thing: I did get validation, I was accepted for a creative writing course, I did win prizes and got work to write professionally. In this regard I think when we start out we need to keep in mind that this takes time though. And not compare too much. And if you do, because one always does, to look for the right comparison. Someone who is at the same level, not age.
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But it’s not just tenacity. Or defying rejections. Or being talented. You can’t make yourself wanting to write. I don’t think that’s how it works. I think if you love it, it will find its way. You will become better because you will want to do it all the time. No amount of homework and schedule and to-do list will help you, if you don’t love it. If you only want it because it accomplishes a different need, a status to achieve, the idea of being an author. And I guess that is where one needs to check their intention.
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All I know is how I did it. How my love for writing could never be subdued by anything else. That whenever I felt the pull I followed. And maybe that is it. To never deny it. To listen to that voice that is asking you to write. And just write, write, write. And if you have silenced that voice for a while or a decade to gently let yourself be carried away.
And not let anything stop you.
- Especially not some entitled arrogant asshole that is pointing at you in a bar and suggesting otherwise.
ENTER THE MUSE SALON
The Muse Salon is the cosy space of the Muse Letter, where I give insights on my creative process, what I read / watch / listen to and where you can ask me anything in the monthly Q/A sessions.
This week I am answering your question on:
Q /A:
I am constantly in survival mode and broke before the end of the month, I do what I love but I miss the security of my former job (I am a freelancer since January this year). How do you deal with the insecurity of self-employment?