Positive Superstition

“Humans have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, in which terrible things do not happen at random, and in which catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.”
-Ed Hickling
 
A strange and gifted man named Darin Morgan wrote several wonderful episodes for the X-Files and Millenium. The Millenium episode concerns a group called the Selfologists, who believe strongly in the power of positive thinking. At one point, one of the Selfologists is being pursued across a rooftop and he decides to leap to the roof of a nearby building.
It’s a fair distance to jump and so another character warns him not to jump.
“You’ll never make it!” he says.
The Selfologist replies,
“Not with that negative attitude I won’t!”
And proceeds to leap to his death.
I love this scene because I get awfully tired of people’s superstitious belief in positive thinking. It’s a particularly North American (and even more particularly American) behaviour, as Barbara Ehrenreich points out in her book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. She belabours her point in this book, which could have been a lengthy magazine article instead, but I do think she’s right and I’m glad someone finally had the stones to say it. Positive thinking is so ingrained in our culture as a good and necessary thing that many people react badly to the least suggestion that it might not always be appropriate or helpful.
One place you’re likely to be assaulted with the notion that without positivity you will FAIL is when looking for advice on shopping a manuscript. Think positive! Have a good attitude! Believe in yourself! And usually this comes with a related hunk of bullshit: You Have To Grow a Thick Skin.
Obviously I’m not a roaring success as an author, with only two books sold to date, but I did sell two and I’ve been asked for a third, so here’s my take on that: it does not matter what kind of attitude you have.
I’ve living proof that you can have an incredibly pessimistic attitude and get your feelings hurt by rejection letters and still sell a book. I’ve met people who are living proof that you can believe in yourself the way Joan of Arc believed in God and still not sell anything. You don’t have to change who you are or how you think. You don’t have to grow a thick skin. It might be nice but, honestly, is that in most writers’ natures?
What you need is resolve.
You have to decide that you’re going to do the damned work. You’re going to (a) finish your book, (b) edit your book, (c) take criticism from beta readers and edit your book some more, (d) research the market, (e) follow all of the rules every agent or publisher has for how they would like to be contacted and (e) do the best job you can with queries and other materials, every time.
You have to send out queries and more queries and more queries. You have to keep it up no matter how much it sucks or how much rejection hurts or how convinced you become that it’s hopeless. Just decide to do it and then do it.
That’s what you need to do and you can be whoever you are while doing it. Cry for two hours every time you get a rejection, if that’s your style. It doesn’t matter, as long as you keep sending out queries.
All the positive thinking in the world can’t save you if you don’t do the work. That’s how you can tell that positive thinking isn’t actual magic. If you sit around a pub thinking that someone is certain to recognize your genius if you just believe in yourself enough, but you don’t send out query letters, your optimism is probably misplaced. I’m not saying this to twit people who sit around pubs feeling like geniuses, but to point out that some people are really, really positive and get nowhere. This connection between positivity and success is imaginary. Sure, there might be a correlation, because positive people might be more motivated to send out queries, but it’s the queries that matter and not your state of mind. You don’t have to feel bad about feeling bad.
I get why people are so hung up on positive thinking. Aside from being lectured about it and read The Little Engine That Could (because he had enough juice and because the hill was low enough, not because he thought he could), it’s nice to think that you have some control in a chaotic world. You want to believe that, if you just think positive, you won’t be subject to randomness. You’ll make good things happen.
A lot of people make good things happen for themselves (if getting disgustingly rich is indeed a good thing) by telling people this, but it’s a confusion of correlation with cause, at best. (Hi, Rhonda Byrne! You’re a manipulative liar making a cushy living off the backs of frightened and overwhelmed people! Now get the hell away from my blog!)
The only control that matters here is over what you do, not what you think.
So get some query letters out there. It might never get you anywhere and you’ll get a ton of rejection letters and each one will make you feel like a risible loser. A lot of people won’t even bother to respond to you and that’ll make you feel like even more of a loser. You will put in time and money and more time and more money. The money is tax deductable. The time comes off your overall lifespan and is irrecoverable.
Do it anyway.
 
Current Bedside Reading: Dan Kennedy, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad
Commentary: This book is a very funny lesson to anyone who thinks having a high-paying job in Manhattan–especially one in the entertainment inudstry–is having it made.
 
My iPod Is Singing: “I’ll kick you in the face with my fist.”

Jul 26, 2010

• Posted by gayleenfroese
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