Recently, I was a finalist in a literary competition for my short story collection, The Survivor’s Guide.
I had mentally prepared myself. I had high expectations. I had gotten this far. Though it might have been better to have no expectations, just considering the possibility of winning opened the floodgates.
This may just be the lot of the creative person. To give so much of the best of yourself—as if it is an endless resource—year after year. You get some recognition; someone publishes you. But you seem to want more back over time, as if you have been depositing your faith into an account and expect a percentage return.
Though you know you must be good enough to have gotten that recognition, you remember the beginnings where it was not easy, where people only pointed out how clueless you were.
Another writer gets the award I had staked my hopes on. But there are conditions, eventualities, unknowns. Maybe even luck plays into it. It is not necessarily about being the best. It is about showing up. Being in the game. It should only matter that I am climbing that mountain.
A series I can watch obsessively is Alone. In this program, ten people are dropped into an extreme wilderness to see who can survive the longest. The winner receives a prize of either half a million dollars, or in the later seasons, a million dollars. That means going alone in the wilderness, making a solid shelter for the harsh coming winter, and having the ability, skill and knowledge to trap or hunt game for food. Not losing their minds because they have no idea what the hell is going on.
What I am compelled by in the program is that success seems to depend on how well one manages themselves. This means outlasting every other participant and hanging on until the end, without knowing what that end is. Finding a way to keep in the game. Much of the struggle is mental.
Undoubtedly, the individual narratives are edited to make for a more compelling series. Yet it’s still a remarkable narrative, with all of the unpredictability of leaving ten people alone in the vastness of Mongolia or the Arctic Circle.
What is so moving on Alone is the work the participants do on their own. They are truly alone. Their tenacity is admirable, as there is probably a good bit of boredom in the day to day routine, too. Some stay for weeks, months. Yet it’s mere survival that matters. How they get their food, how they keep the mental agility to not let thoughts bring them down. (In so many instances, the person begins to miss family, friends, the normal comforts of home.) It can’t be easy. Often, the folks who seem most able to hang on until the end are the ones who talk themselves out of it.
Though the participants of Alone are in it for the money, at some point, it seems to become about something else. Perhaps a battle within oneself.
I cannot help but see in this program an analogy to the writing process. How often do we simply talk ourselves out of sticking with writing? How often do we imagine our competition has the edge we don’t have? Who says you have to compete with anyone? Why can’t it be enough that you do it, are in it? Again, I see the sheer fact of having gotten far along as mostly proof that survival, sticking with it, is a balance of mind over matter.
Does this analogy to survival in writing even make sense? Is survival then success, or staying power? What makes someone give up writing? I may have survived, but when do I know if I have arrived?
Maybe you never know.
People do give up. They may lack the will or the fortitude or whatever it takes to believe they can continue. It’s always surprising to me when someone gets so far and they give up. What does it mean to give up in writing? Maybe you believe that you are not getting the rewards you think you deserve, and you begin to ask, what is the point?
I always return to the notion that this is the reward, that I am writing. I am surviving. Certainly not on the fruits of writing alone. If that was the case it would be more about pure economics—i.e., what am I willing to write for money? I am talking about writing on a more intrinsic, artistic level. I don’t need to write; I want to. It’s when I begin to apply these extrinsic demands, how I compare to others, that envy creeps in. Why did this person get that award over me? Writing does not lack for its abundance of self-fulfilling prophecies. Keep at it long enough, and there are intrinsic rewards that I believe outweigh even the extrinsic ones.
I think another aspect of survival for the Alone contestants that can be useful anywhere, but in particular for writing, is a positive mental attitude. The participants who hold on to the greater goal in mind tend to do better. It often has to do with family: “I’m doing this for them.” (To be clear, they are in it for the money, something that can hardly be the draw in writing.) There is no self-sabotage talk; maybe they keep it to themselves, or it is craftily edited out. They get busy on projects. They do the work that gets their mind off worrying about whether they can continue or not. And in each season I’ve seen, the ultimate winner doesn’t let doubt get the best of them. Of course, this assumes they aren’t on the brink of starvation.
I always return to the notion that this is the reward, that I am writing.
In writing, there can seem to be an almost daily renewal of a positive attitude: you are doing it—writing that poem, or story. Crafting that chapter or essay. Writing is an activity that is imbued with positivity.
Taking up writing seriously coincided with my own step toward a better attitude in my life. I found writing in my mid-twenties just at the time I needed to shift out of debilitating negative thinking. Although I didn’t really establish the practice I would one day have—that came about ten years into it—I saw that writing and books were a salvation. The practice of writing can feel like riding the crest of the wave; for me, all the rewards have come from that. Though this might stray a bit from my survival metaphor, I am in it. I have a practice, and experience. I know the landscape.
Ephesians 6:13Therefore take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground, and having done everything, to stand. 14Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness arrayed, 15and with your feet fitted with the readiness of the gospel of peace... [I am reminded of this verse which I love when I read this article. Verses and Stories or whatever come to me as I read other things. I love the analogy of writing to survival. Anything you do wherein you survive the actual doing of it is due to actually 'standing' your ground and relentlessly refusing to back down. Great article. I'll have to see the show. I may get hooked. I did ten years military and did many many years of Scouting and living in the woods farming and hunting and fishing and whatever ... love that kind of stuff.