Celebrate yourself
By Kathleen McCleary | October 15, 2014 |
photo by Luca Moglia
When I was in the midst of writing my first novel, I gave up. I’d never written fiction before. I had never even taken a class on how to write fiction. I had no idea what I was doing, and I knew I would never get published. I explained all this to my husband.
“You know, even if you never get published,” he said, “It is a huge accomplishment just to finish an entire novel. How many people actually do that?”
And I thought, he’s right.
Sometimes in writing we can get so focused on what recognition and success look like in the world around us that we forget what success looks like to each of us, on our terms. Of course I want my books to be published; I want readers and reviewers to adore them and I want to sell a million copies. I’ve published three novels now, and pored over every review in every periodical and blog, compulsively checked my Amazon reviews and rankings, scrutinized my royalty statements, and done endless marketing and PR for my books, including once driving 1400 miles in seven days to visit 28 indie book stores.
But with each book I’ve gotten less and less invested in the outcome, because I realize that the only part of the whole process I can control is the writing. I have learned that there is great satisfaction in writing as well as I can every day, and in challenging myself to make each book better than the last, and in celebrating the accomplishments that matter to me.
Celebrating ourselves doesn’t come easily to many people, especially writers, who are often (stereotype alert!) smart, introspective, shy, and yes, insecure. All those adjectives fit me to a T. I am a nice Mid-western girl. I am polite. I often defer to authority (or at least I used to, before I became middle-aged and cranky). I am modest. Self-promotion makes me queasy, and I’m uncomfortable being the center of attention. But I have two daughters. I see how hard they work, and I see how eager they are to please. I want to show them that there is nothing wrong with cheering for yourself when you’ve earned it.
I sold my first novel when I was 47, on a day when I had such a bad head cold I couldn’t breathe. What I remember most about that week is going to the dress rehearsal for my daughter’s Odyssey of the Mind competition, the day after returning from New York, where my agent had introduced me to several editors and publishers who, to my amazement, wanted my book. At that point I was so sick that all I wanted to do was sit propped up in bed with some Vicks’ Vapo-rub and a glass of orange juice. Instead, I had to go to the dress rehearsal, lugging cardboard scenery and a hot dog costume. When I arrived, my friend Steve pulled out a bottle of champagne.
“I’m sick,” I said. “I can’t drink champagne.”
He popped the cork. “Everyone,” he said, “should have a glass of champagne on the day they sell their first novel.”
And he poured me a glass of champagne and I drank it.
The champagne stands out for me because even after I had done it, even after I had written an entire novel and found an agent and sold it, I still wasn’t quite ready to celebrate my achievement until Steve insisted. And I am eternally grateful he did.
This summer I put aside the 100+ pages of a new novel I’d been working on because it didn’t feel right to me. I haven’t written since. It’s plagued me, this not writing, and opened up the door for many doubts and fears. But then last week I opened a blank document and wrote the first few pages of something new, something that feels intriguing and scary and exciting. I wrote three pages. The next day, I wrote a little more. No one read my pages, or congratulated me on getting back to it, or asked for a synopsis. But the pages are good; it feels like a victory to have survived my dry spell.
So last night, I opened the champagne.
What is your next big milestone, and what do you plan to do to celebrate that once you’ve reached it?
Kathleen McCleary is the author of three novels—House and Home, A Simple Thing, and Leaving Haven—and has worked as a bookseller, bartender, and barista (all great jobs for gathering material for fiction). A Simple Thing (HarperCollins 2012) was nominated for the Library of Virginia Literary Awards. She was a journalist for many years before turning to fiction, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and USA Weekend, as well as HGTV.com, where she was a regular columnist. She taught writing as an adjunct professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and teaches creative writing to kids ages 8-18 as an instructor with Writopia Labs, a non-profit. She also offers college essay coaching (https://thenobleapp.com), because she believes that life is stressful enough and telling stories of any kind should be exciting and fun. When she’s not writing or coaching writing, she looks for any excuse to get out into the woods or mountains or onto a lake. She lives in northern Virginia with her husband and two daughters and Jinx the cat.
I love this post. And it’s just what I needed! You’re so right: as hard as the writing, revising, selling/marketing are, the celebrating is hard in a completely different “give yourself permission” sort of way. During a recent spike in my amazon ranking, every time I dropped back a bit, I let it overshadow the giddy climb. It’s too early in the morning for champagne to celebrate, but I’m going to indulge in something even better: a pat on my back, a vacation from worry…….and maybe champagne later in the day. Thanks for doing for me what Steve did for you.
You could even celebrate by not looking at Amazon rankings for a week or two ;-) Congrats on your successes.
Thanks for this inspirational post, Kathleen. Often, writers get wrapped up in meeting deadlines or daily word counts and they forget to celebrate their successes. I learned a long time ago that nobody is going to throw a party for me when I overcome daunting obstacles and complete that novel. Writers must celebrate their achievements. Along with that, writers must develop realistic expectations for success. Your husband was correct. Finishing a novel is a major achievement and I take my hat off to anyone who does it. A writer cannot control what happens to the novel once she launches it into the world, so why worry? Good luck and best wishes with your latesty project.
Thanks, CG. I believe it is all too easy to lose sight of what a very difficult thing it is to write a good story. The problem is that good stories SEEM effortless. Writing every day in spite of the million distractions available to all of us is a major achievement. Finishing a story of any length is a major achievement. More and more, I’m adopting the “why worry?” attitude. Thanks!
Thanks for this post and cheers! The rest of the day I will be celebrating the two new pages I just wrote.
You go, Carleen! Some days I have to celebrate a paragraph, because that’s all the day has produced.
I love this post (and just as an aside, I had a wretched flue when I sold my first book, and was so feverish that when I woke up two days later, I thought it might have been a dream).
I am going to celebrate writing pages every morning this week.
I love your story about wondering if selling your first book was a dream. Even now I will occasionally pick up one of my own books and read a few pages and be stunned that I wrote it. After it’s over, even the writing can seem like a dream.
Having a blocked flue is no fun at all; it can smoke up the entire house.
If you look at it from the perspective of: most novels (self or trad published) don’t hit the best-seller lists, then you might as well celebrate finishing something. Hanging your hat on stardom gets you nowhere.
EXACTLY, Jim. It’s a fickle business. Unless you get some genuine satisfaction from the process itself, you’re likely to be perpetually discouraged/unhappy about being a writer.
This is great, Kathleen. It really is about the small victories, isn’t it?
Kudos to you.
Denise Willson
Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT
Thanks, Denise. And kudos right back to you.
Wonderful post, and you are so right that we need to celebrate ourselves. I share your reluctance to be in the limelight, so when I have to be “on” I pretend I am someone else. I do some acting now and then, so it isn’t hard for me to become Maryann Miller the famous writer and not Maryann Miller the wallflower.
My next milestone is to finish a new book that started much like your latest – something new and so different that I’m not even sure how to categorize it. I had another book in the works, the third in my mystery series, but it was just flat, and like you, I just put it away, wondering if I’d lost that creative spark. Isn’t it wonderful when we discover the spark is still there?
I think one of the great challenges of writing is to make sure we’re always following that spark, Maryann. Thanks for your comment.
Kathleen-
Did someone mention champagne? Funny how quick we are to celebrate others’ achievements, but we don’t feel equally worthy.
Good to see, too, that you found the solution to a dry spell. A new project can be just the cure. So can asking the right questions when one is stuck.
Who is my protagonist and what do they need? What do they need that doesn’t come from the plot? What can they do about it and how can that, then, be enacted through what happens?
Stuck only means stuck for a moment. Words on the page are the bubbles in the champagne. Drink up. Write. When we do that we’re sitting in a cafe in Paris.
Or a coffee bar in Brooklyn. That’s how it feels to me. (And sometimes I am actually *in* that coffee bar, better still.) Love this post, thanks.
I love the idea that when we write we’re sitting in a cafe in Paris. Makes me want to get back to writing as soon and often as possible! Thanks.
Thank you for this reminder that the most powerful acknowledgement we can receive is the acknowledgement we give ourselves. I’m a business & career coach (and writer) and although I’m not typically prescriptive, I do “insist” that my clients throw themselves a party when they’ve achieved something big–promotions, graduations, launching a new business. Amazing how we resist that!
I especially love your encouragement to focus on the process of writing, not the outcome. Yes, it’s the only thing we can control–our output. Many thanks!
I love it that you encourage your clients to throw themselves a party to celebrate achievements. Great idea. Don’t know why it is so hard for all of us to “toot our own horns,” as my father would say.
I appreciate your encouragement to celebrate!
I needed this today since I’ve gotten three agent rejections in the past week. Instead of wallowing in those, I will celebrate some successful writing I’ve completed.
You should celebrate finishing a piece of work that is complete enough to send out to an agent, and your own bravery in sending it out. Those are both great achievements! Good luck.
Some great stuff in here, thanks very much.
Just yesterday I finished my draft of book three in my epic fantasy series. There is still polishing and revising to be done, but it was a big milestone. Why don’t I feel like celebrating? Why can’t I feel that this is an accomplishment? It is because I am trapped in the details, and I can’t separate the details from the overall story.
I just conquered the dragon. All I’m seeing is that the big bad is left to go (indie publishing). I’m not allowing a sigh of relief that the dragon is dead.
Thanks for the post. It is nice to hear that writers are alike, despite our differences.
Today, if all goes well, I’ll write the last scene in the first draft of my fourth contracted historical novel. It needs a lot of work still. I honestly had this mental conversation with myself this morning, it went something like, “Don’t take tomorrow off to celebrate like you thought you might. You know how much work this book still needs and you have a deadline coming and that thing at the end of the month that’s going to require your time and you really can’t afford to take even ONE day off to celebrate right now so…”
That’s what my inner Border Collie sounds like.
Congrats for the new writing! I had a season like that. Starting that new book after a long, silent, dry spell was exhilarating and scary both. I’m almost five novels on the other side of it now.
PS: All went well!
Nice way to put it. After about 10 years and 5 unpublished novels, I was at a low point. I’m not sure how I got out of it, but sometime in late 2012 I decided to get serious. I spent (wasted) another year trying to fix an old manuscript. Then I decided to “just write and keep writing.” Now I’ll have 3 completed manuscripts this year and will probably finish the rough draft of #4 by New Years. And I do this with my 2 hours of writing time every evening. Maybe I’ll slow down some day, but I find my writing only gets better when I just don’t let up. So my next big goal is to self-publish my first YA by year’s end. And hopefully land an agent for my first middle grade. It’s a lot, for sure, but it’s too easy to get trapped in an always-editing cycle. Been there done that. Time to write and see what happens.
Beautiful post. Yes – the outcome is out of our hands. We do the work, the rest is up to God – or whatever you believe in… Someone just asked me in an interview what I do to celebrate my book launches. I usually spend a lot of time emailing people and thanking them for support, and following up on marketing and more marketing… I said, “This time I might go to Ojai, CA and sleep for a few days.”
Nice post. Thank you. And great timing! I’ve hit a wall at 70,000 words of memoir writing and I need a cheerleader – it might just have to be me and I might have a glass of champagne to celebrate and acknowledge the 70, 000 rather than the next 10,000 that won’t seem to come!
Lxx
It’s far too easy to set our goals so high that we completely miss all the milestones we hit along the way (and feel like we’re flailing in the dark because we haven’t reached those goals yet.) Several months ago I finished editing together the first cut of the feature film I’ve been working on for the last couple years. I was telling a friend what I’d been up to that week, and included that as a bullet point in the list right alongside car repairs and going to the movies. When he said it called for a celebration, I pointed out how much work was still left to do. I was so focused on the big shiny prize at the end of the tunnel that it took him reminding me that just getting as far as I had was an accomplishment in itself.
Way to get back into it, Kathleen! There are a million reasons not to write and only one way to ignore them: By enjoying the work.
Best of luck to you with your work!
What a wonderful post, Kathleen! And I’m happy you found your way back to the pages. I began with magazine writing and still remember opening my first acceptance from Ladybug. My kids were toddlers and we all celebrated with a reading of the 100-word story along with blackberries and ice cream! It never gets old. But in the end, the writing itself is the reward, esp. when so many other tasks are calling out to me. Writing is what I love best.
You are so right, Kathleen. Success is such an individual thing. Like you, I’ve wanted to give up, but for whatever reason, call it obsession, I kept going and finally, finally, today, I launched my debut novel, A CRY FROM THE DEEP. I started writing in my 20s and now, I’m a grandmother.
And you know, it’s not even about how many books will sell, it’s about getting it done, seeing your dream come true. One reviewer’s review was so on target with what I had hoped to accomplish in the telling of my story, that that alone was satisfaction. I think it helped me coming into this with low expectations. There are millions of books out there and many astounding ones. I’m not trying to compete with them, but it’s nice to know that I can tell a story that pleases some readers. Thank you for a thoughtful post.
Congrats on your debut, Diana! And yes, my deepest satisfactions in writing come from the process itself AND from connecting with readers who have found something in my books that resonates with them. What every one of us wants most is to feel accepted and understood. I feel lucky to connect with readers in that way.
This hit home for me. I have a novel right now sitting on my desk that I need to finish but I just can’t for some reason. I feel I have too many projects going on. I need to find a way to just write 500 words a day.
I love what you said about never being published yet having actually written a novel. That’s a huge success as you said and it’s rarely done. That is my main goal within the next year and I WILL DO IT!
Well, Kathleen, you can see you’ve touched a nerve
here. The post is a most generous gift you’ve given
to us. I’ve been stuck “perfecting” my YA novel and
your shared story is the right inspiration at the right
time.
I have a lot in common with you. I’ve never read of
another writer who parented children competing in
Odyssey of the Mind. I put in six years of costumes
& sets for two sons. That’s champagne worthy! And I
lived in Iowa at the time. I wrote constantly but never
had the confidence to do anything with it.
Then I joined SCBWI and wrote a bunch of picture books.
PBs became hard to sell during the economic slump.
I started the first of three YA novels.
I’ve rewritten the first one countless times. I really need
to do one more pass, send it off, and start something
fresh. Thanks to you I think I will do this starting
tomorrow.
Like you, I lived in the DC area and spent years in libraries
and bookstores there. I’m impressed with all you’ve
accomplished. I’ll keep at it and celebrate when I
deserve to.
All the Best,
Gillian
Very encouraging. I am 42and just started fiction writing. My struggle is focusing on a large project since I’m so used to short ones. I need to learn to write for the joy of creating. I need too celebrate small victories even if I’m the only one who knows about them.
I was 48 when my first novel was published, Kari. I’d say celebrate every small step along the way.
Hi Kathleen! Great post. I just finished my first novel and submitted it last night to three agents and 2 editors who requested it at a conference. When I hit send I didn’t celebrate. But your husband is absolutely right, and I needed it to read in this post. I just finished writing a novel. Me. I did it. Wow! Thank you for the reminder to celebrate the moments as they come. Best of luck on your writing.
Good luck to you, too, Natalie, and congratulations on the MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT of finishing your first novel. That is most definitely cause to celebrate.
Thanks for sharing your experience. So often we focus on our To Do list and forget about our Well Done list. I’m working on the final chapters of my fourth mystery novel and have a tendency to flog myself for letting it take longer than I had planned instead of celebrating the fact that it’s almost done.
Drinking champagne is much more motivating than a wearing a hair shirt!
Ruth
I’m impressed that you’re almost finished with a fourth book. Congratulations!
I’m hoping my next big milestone is an acceptance letter to an MA in Writing. If that is the case, there will pizza and there will be cake and I will celebrate my tiny victory alone because my parents are 500 miles across the state from me and that still makes me sob even after a year of living on my own and none of my friends even live in the same state as me, let alone the same city. But life will be good and I am doing what I want/need to do and that is all that matters.
How brave you are to go after your dream, Brianna! Good luck. I’m rooting for you.
Thanks so much for this! It got me out of my writer’s block for a bit. I’m so worried about publishing my first novel, it isn’t even funny.
My goal is to publish this book before I graduate high school. So, I’ve been working extra hard trying to complete it.
Although I have fears like, “What if nobody likes my writing? What if they don’t love my characters as much as I do?” This article kinda calmed me down, and reminded me that I love writing so I should do it just because I want to not because I want it to be a best-seller.