Leaping

Rogue Ink’s Tei and some of her posters on her latest post about Taking the Leap lamented that jump from preparing to be a writer to actually being one. Ladies and gents, I feel your pain. We all do. We’ve been there. We still visit there once in a while. This post is for you.

That leap into your career is the most terrifying thing you’ve ever had to do. It’s like jumping into the water from the deck of a cruise ship – you’re not sure if the water’s going to be warm, cold, or if the engines will just suck you in, churn you up, and spit you out like chum for the sharks. Scary stuff. Well, I’m here to say you’ve got a built-in life vest, a metaphorical set of water wings. It’s called your talent.

The problem is most new writers (of which we were all at one time labeled) have difficulty separating the job to be done from the fear of not being accepted. Why? Because writing’s a strange thing – we somehow connect our egos and our self-worth with the job. Surgeons do that, too. And plumbers. And bank managers. And yet they all manage to separate their egos from the job at hand. Okay, maybe not surgeons, because if a surgeon has a bad day, someone dies. But he’s still a surgeon. He still went to college for a gazillion years and went through residency to earn his way from cutting through bananas to cutting through humans. But the stakes are a tad higher for him than for a writer who misplaced a modifier or dangled a participle.

And plumbers, they have bad days, too. But you don’t see them throwing down their pipe wrenches and lamenting, “I’m the worst person in the world because I can’t fix Mrs. Horowitz’s leaky faucet!” No, you don’t see that. Instead, you see them heading to the hardware store for a new seal or for stronger pipe dope.

Rebecca posted on Tei’s site this insight: “But after that comes the ‘sending out the call’. Inviting, no, make that begging people to judge you and your work.” Ah, dear Rebecca. Therein lies the problem. You’re looking at this from an entirely different perspective. You’re waiting for people to judge you as a person, to validate your existence, to say, “Okay, you can be a writer.” Note two things here – first, how you’re setting yourself up for others to say you’ve failed; and second, how you’re giving entirely too much control over your career to strangers. You own that career. It’s yours. It doesn’t belong to the guy who wants you to rewrite a website, nor the woman who expects you to provide sales letters on a monthly basis. It’s yours alone. You get to determine if you’re good or not. These people will have opinions, yes. But as my dear father says, opinions are like a-holes: everyone has one. What’s your opinion about your talent and your career? That’s the voice you listen to. The others may influence if you choose to let them. But they don’t define you.

Here’s how you should view it, and forgive me for editing your sentences, but in this case, it’s necessary: “Inviting, no convincing, people to believe that my work is drop-dead fantastic and they’d be colossal fools if they don’t hire me, because I rock.” That’s the way to approach the launch of your career. Change your perspective. You write because you can. They hire you because they can’t. You are valuable to them. They know it and expect you to know it, too.

To veteran writers, I ask this: Remember that moment in your fledgling career when you were about to hit the ground running, but you were afraid to make the leap? How’d you manage it? Help a new writer or two out by sharing your thoughts here. Let’s push some of these talented, teetery birds out of the nest and watch them fly.