Chasing Validation and Losing Yourself
Before I ever hit a bestseller list, before I ever landed an agent, signed a contract, or saw my books in stores, I was simply a writer who loved writing. I wrote because I had to; because it was part of me. I wrote because it made me happy; it made me feel alive. In the early days, no one read anything I’d written because I didn’t show anyone. That was the beauty of it—I wrote for myself and not for anyone else. But later, a demon crawled inside my ear and whispered sweet stories about validation and recognition. It told me I wanted more, needed more, and I believed it.
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
Mark 8:36
Rejection became a familiar visitor, and rightly so, as my early work wasn’t great. But I didn’t mind because—and here’s the kicker—I didn’t even know it was bad. No one had ever told me; even the agents I’d submitted to were kind and neutral in their form rejection letters. You might think their vagueness was detrimental to my writing improvement, but a part of me is glad they never spelled it out. Why? I know it might sound crazy to want to be left in the dark and continue embarrassing myself—like those sweet but blissfully unaware singers on American Idol, bless their hearts—but being oblivious to expectations and rules, I firmly believe, helped me keep going.
There is something magical about ignorance. It makes us innocent. We can’t really be blamed for something we didn’t know. And truth, although we need it for most things in life, it has a tendency to kill enthusiasm and wonder. When a child draws a picture, do we tell them it could be better? When a Little League team loses its game, do coaches tell them how terrible they played? Of course, these are children—I get that—and adults have to play by a different set of rules, but I think that sometimes it’s OK to indulge adults, too. Especially a bright-eyed young woman who loves to write and always carries sunshine in her pocket when she does. You’d be surprised by what triumphs passionate, determined people who have no idea what they’re doing can accomplish.
My point is that had anyone told me how terrible my writing was, I wouldn’t have stopped writing—no, I loved it far too much—but I probably would’ve crawled back inside the private recesses of my writerly brain and closed the door forever.
But that’s not what I did.
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