WHAT I FINALLY GOT THROUGH MY THICK SKULL (HOLLY SCHINDLER)

I began my full-time pursuit of publication in the spring of ’01, just after receiving my master’s.  I was convinced I’d get published quickly…I’d already placed short fiction, poetry, and literary critique in a few journals while I was still a student, I’d consistently been referred to as one of the better writers in the English program in my university, and—if I’m to be completely honest—I hadn’t really failed at much of anything.  I was the typical Type A-er, racking up straight A’s.  Anytime I decided to try something new—take up another instrument, put together a garage band, do a little modeling around town—I never really encountered much in the way of an obstacle.  That’s not to say I didn’t work hard.  I just hadn’t heard many “no”s.

A year into my pursuit of book-length publication, the only thing I had heard was “no.”  When the spring of ’02 rolled around, I hadn’t had a single piece of work accepted.  Same for ’03.  Spring of ’04, I watched the graduation footage on the news and couldn’t help feeling like a complete and total…failure.  Ditto for ’05.  By ’06, I felt like the entire world had moved on—everyone I knew from college had wrapped up advanced degrees, were teaching, moving on in their lives.  I swore all I had was a hole in my office wall shaped like my skull, because I’d spent five years banging my head against it.  Spring of ’07, graduation rolled around again—still without a single acceptance.  And I very much felt like I was someone who had once been—but was no longer—an overachiever.  Spring of ’08, and I was still in the same place I’d been seven years earlier.  Still getting papered with rejections.  Piles and piles of failures.  Giant red “F”s.  More than a thousand of them in all.

…Late in ’08 (around Thanksgiving), things started to pick up.  By early ’09, I’d signed two deals: one with a publishing house for my first YA novel and one with an agent offering representation.  I didn’t jump for joy as much as I breathed a sigh of complete and utter relief.  

Seven and a half years it took just to ink those first deals.  And if I could do anything over again, it’d be this: I would not beat myself up for the time it took me to get there.  What I finally got through my thick skull after I’d signed a few contracts—and had that whole 20 / 20 hindsight thing going for me—is that success comes in external and internal varieties.  A book on the store shelves?  That’s definitely an external success.  But writing something that gets an editor’s attention, that makes her write a personal note along with her rejection, and then taking that rejection to heart, learning from it, and revising?  That’s a success, too—an internal success. 

Looking back, I can now see the myriad of ways that I grew between ’01 and ’09; I can see the hundreds—thousands—of  internal successes I racked up, even when those rejections were pouring in.  I’m proud of my published books and of the awards and reviews I’ve snagged.  But I have to admit, I’m every bit as proud of my internal successes, too.