In Defense of Submitting (not like that... smh I mean work)

Or In Defense of Showing your Whole Ass (Metaphorically! Damn!)

I’m writing this in response to a post made by Alexander Chee

A writer I look up to you can read it HERE!

A couple of years ago I went to the museum of Art and Design. Although I can’t remember the artist featured I remember how it felt walking through the space. It was an exhibit on screen printing, a technique that requires intense labor on the part of the artist. What was astonishing to me, however was not the way it seemed the work had to be done, but the fact that this exhibit showed the misfiring, the mistakes, the throwaways, the parts we try to hide. On on printing the color yellow had grown unwieldy and seeped into everything else. When compared to the more perfect, final version of the painting of a city street it was considerably worse, but seeing the image there made me feel in communion, it made me feel like maybe I was okay to fail.

I am not a screen printer, I am, of course a writer. And For the longest time my entire career could be summed up by this few words: DECLINED.

I had a sort of non-standard way into the literary world. I learned what I could during my lunch breaks at the Palisades Mall’s Barnes & Noble which carried Poets & Writers. I would also read the same magazine in the library. I read in an unguided way.

There was an era where I did not like to be home if I could avoid it. Basketball practice and track practice helped, but those only went so long. And in the Summer I was stuck. By the time I was 16 I spent a lot of self-guided time in the library. I read and wrote. Even without fully admitting to myself I wanted to be a writer, I had created a practice.

One day we should have a real discussion about those Glimmer Train contests lol. But I was exactly the kind of person who would submit endlessly to contests, I would save the money I got working in Steve & Barry’s at the time, and funnel it into this thing I was doing alone, almost none of the people who knew me would have any real sense of how much I thought I was going to have a book published by age 19, how much I believed I would save my family’s financial outcomes by the power of my writing.

But getting to the point of why it is worth your while to submit your work: From age sixteen to age twenty-six my writing career existed on pages like these. The images here in this post are from one of the Submittable accounts I was able to recover. I had one tied to a college email as well and I can’t get into that one.

For the uninitiated Submittable is a hub that many literary magazines use to manage their submissions. As such, for the user, it becomes a one stop shop to see the status of your submissions. For a very long time this was my writing career. Not my writing life, but my professional, outwardly facing writing “career.” It was bleak, it was difficult. I remember for the longest time the DECLINE image which are now grey in these images were red. I miss it a little. I don’t know if this is the traumatized kid in me, but this grey is so tame, so coddling. That red was my identity it meant I was trying. Bloodied, but trying still. That said, it is not only a masochistic impulse that makes me a writer who believes it can be healthy to submit your work often.

It’s important, I think, to have some kind of context for your writing life. A sort of “Why.” For me it was dramatic and perhaps self-important/arrogant/delusional, but I truly, completely believe in it. My why was “keep the lights on/ buy a good house for the family.” Eventually, through the work and growing and a human it’s become something more like, “help grow the world towards compassion,” but the other more tangible, practical stuff will always be there for me. And because I had that drive, I have submit regularly since way before I probably “should” have been. That is, way before I had a realistic chance at being included in any magazine. I have messaged Oprah and Poet’s and Writer’s asking them to essentially sponsor me because I would definitely become a successful writer. That is to say, I’ve showed my whole ass many, many times.

I loved Alex’s post because it cuts through a lot of the noise and presents a practical and useable reality. I love it because there is a justified tension in art spaces with the doing portion and the sharing portion of writing. While I was in MFA, I knew there were people who, even though they’d decided to spend three years growing their craft, were terrified of submitting work out into the world. This is not an inherently bad thing. Some of the tension I’m describing is due to the very real and pervasive commodification of art/self. Many people, artists, creative people in general (or really anyone) might get intoxicated by the promise of money, the desire to be known or famous, the desire to feel like their work “matters” in the sense it is perceived on a large scale. And so, rightly, many programs built to grow artists shy away from the discussion of when artist meets external world.

We often say that the selling of work and the making or work are two completely different things and they are… until they’re not. For example, by selling my book I have the chance to work with Naomi Gibbs, my editor and that has become one of the most fruitful artistic relationships I’ve ever had.

In his book A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, George Saunders describes part of the purpose of the MFA as helping students acquire the “technical means to become defiantly and joyfully themselves. ” I am a craft person. I love thinking really closely about how art works. But for me the power of submitting is it creates a useable, practical context for creative growth.

To this day I have Mary Karr’s (another professor of mine) voice in my ear saying, “Make it undeniable.” And the first time I felt that I had an undeniable piece and then I saw something other than DECLINED, was genuinely a life changing moment for me. My vision had been confirmed. It felt miraculous.

By the time I was in MFA I had already written a book and sent it to an agent. The book was terrible, I showed my whole ass in the Query letter (I’ll talk about that in another post), but I knew I had experience of 1) 100% believing I’d made something amazing, 2) hitting a wall and 3)by some magic, after hitting the wall, my eyes somehow readjusted, and when I looked back at what had been amazing, I realized it kinda sucked. And that’s part of the magic of submitting your work.

For me there is nothing like the prospect of an impartial human being reading your work. When I would have a story I’d work on for months or years finally get to the place where I thought it could be submitted somewhere, it was like the intensity around the page when I’d revise would shift. Like when a videogame boss reaches its third and final phase and the music changes. I’d see it so differently, so precisely. And then I’d submit and I’d feel in my chest genuine desire. Desire to be seen, understood, community, anything. And 95% (at least) of the time I’d be smacked with a DECLINE in red a few weeks later.

What then? Well, that’s another benefit of submitting. The only way to know who you are when you get knocked down is to be knocked down. Everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face etc. etc. Who are you when you are told no? Not good enough? Do you fold and quit? Do you curl up in a ball and be sad for a couple of days then lock TF back in on revision and make the work undeniable (what I do most times ). Do you feel hurt, but not too hurt because you KNOW your shit is strong and they just didn’t get it. (what I do sometimes). Do you think you’re a complete genius and say fuck them and vow a blood feud against the editors (I’ve done this in the past, it is not a sustainable path lol. Release that ego)

I’d like to note that on these sheets of rejections are many stories that made it into my first book. And do I think those editors were idiots? No. I am forever grateful for them. They were some of my best teachers, even those that never said a word to me. They grew me. And eventually submitting help me grow something essential. An awareness, a less egoic sense of self. By working hard enough, by showing work to enough people, I learned what it felt like in my body when something was really, truly doing what I hoped it could. Also, the few times I did get something accepted and got to work with an editor (!) it was a dream come true. I hope those people at Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing, know I will never forget them.

Another thing about submitting that is incredible is this path, this life in words is beautiful. And a lot of that beauty comes the willingness to share one’s heart with the world. To be supremely vulnerable. To say I wrote this, I think you’d like it and have anybody respond in any way. There is immense beauty in the act of writing. Genuinely, I think there is a holiness in the act of doing, in sitting with oneself and creating. I also think that sharing that specialness, that thing you created counts for something too.

For a long time, DECLINED, that one word was the only feedback I had in the world. And in that it meant a lot to me. Somebody had said nah, but they’d at least read my work and that made me feel like I was in the game. No one is perfect. Many of us who are artists only ever present ourselves to the world in those rarified moments of success, of triumph of completion, but much much much more of the time this is an art of failure. But if you believe in revision, if you remember work can get better, there is no failure, only growth. Badges of honor.

Sometimes I was embarrassed. Sometimes looking back I know I showed my whole ass by submitting too soon. But truly, a willingness to do so was the foundation of my career.. And without that willingness, for me at least, nothing else happens.

If you haven’t already go read THIS it will help you!

And here is some audio of me reflecting on my Submittable era