Are You A Writer if You Don’t Get Published?

I’ve been toiling with the question even though I know in my heart that the answer is a resounding YES.

You see, although I have been published, it has been a long time since something has been accepted for publication. I continue to average 1-2 rejections a week. This is not me complaining. I get that there is a mathematical equation that would increase my publication possibility if I submitted more, but for what I can submit in my life at this time, I’m getting 100% rejections. Some of them are very kind, indeed.

But I’ve been feeling differently about ‘being’ a writer, and I wonder what that relationship is to getting published, what that relationship is to outcome…and to what value I’m putting on said outcome in relation to my self as ‘successful’ or not.

I wonder if you feel this too…this wavering…waxing and waning, living ‘sense’ in the spot where your ribs meet in the front, that maybe…you’re not a real writer because real writers get published.

I know the stories of so-and-so who was rejected 30 times before a publisher accepted her or how so-and-so covered walls with rejections before he was published. I know. We know. A simple internet search gleans a million hits of success after loads of rejection, but if I may, play here in the realm of living in it…

Being a writer is an active undertaking.

Writing is an action. Therefore, it would follow that if one writes, he/she/they are writing, and writers.

We can easily agree that reading is also an action. Therefore, it would follow that if one reads, he/she/they are reading, they are readers. This includes listening to audio books – using a different faculty in the body, but remaining engaged in the action of reading.* (Please include audio books – aka ‘listening’ – when I write ‘read’ in the rest of this post.)

Perhaps because I am part of the system that publishes books, that participates in the act of ‘choosing’ a ‘writer’ whose words will be published – my relationship with this result that follows the act of writing – it is affecting my personal relationship with my own writing.

I work with/support many writers who are being published. I am journeying with them in the undulating excitements and wearying woes of publication. And at the same time, I am a writer, submitting and attempting to be published, and I am experiencing 100% rejection.

I’d like to just pause to express the feelings that I’m having about being a writer and being published. There’s a large part of me that believes being published equals success, equals ‘You are a writer, Vanessa, if you are published’. This part also agrees that the process of writing – the action – is extremely important and powerful and profound. That it counts…that it is, actually, the best part of being a writer. That writing a novel, say, is a grand feat for sheer the volume and energetic pouring out that it is. But what happens then? Don’t we want people to read what we write? Even the people who read our submissions…even if they reject us?

I want people to read what I write. Here on this blog, and on social media, if I use it…in my newsletters and emails. Why are people who read blogs or posts…people who read emails and newsletters different than say, people who read a contest-winning poetry contest or a book? Are they different?

The writer in me is making certain parts of the writing process and certain parts of the publication process feel different…have more or less value…make me feel more or less like a writer. Does this happen to you?

Perhaps this wearyness is an extension of anger that I can’t get published; a weepy lamb who is really just a well-costumed anger wolf. Is this…feeling ‘less than’ an extension of misogyny learned in childhood from a parent who deemed those unsuccessful as ‘weak’? Perhaps all of these emotions are thickening roots, growing up and around the banyan tree that is my procrastination – choking out my ability to see the forest that is my novel awaiting final edits?

Yes. You are a writer if you don’t get published. You are writer if you write. You are a reader if you read. You are a painter if you paint…a musician if you play an instrument…an athlete if you practise your sport…

But we are also complicated humans with emotions that wobble our beliefs in our creative selves, and goddess do we love to label and choose and reject and measure…and forget our extraordinary light that is our commitment to sharing our stories.

Before we had things called books…before we had publishers and the internet…we had a fire, we had voices, we had the rapture of each other’s listening, undivided attention to telling stories. Perhaps if I remember and pull down this energy of our ancestors, it will help me keep writing. Keep telling stories. Keep feeling the joy in the process and it’ll be…a more humbling and inspirational experience when a rejection zooms in. That success will widen to include process and giddy-day-dreaming. That success equal writing this post and clicking ‘publish’. That the internet is our fire. That the clarity I glean, the knowing-ness that I am a writer simply by writing, is equal to the feeling of being published in, say the New York Times…What my body feels inside when I write is significant – no matter where the words end up.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for sharing this exchange of creativity.