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Tayari's Blog: It's Okay to Take A Breather

Posted by TayariJones on April 4, 2009 08:58 AM
Filed under The Writing Life

I was on the phone yesterday with a poet-friend who was feeling very demoralized about all of the contests to which she had submitted her manuscript. (For those of you not in the poetry loop: Many poets publish their first books by sending the manuscripts to contests. There is a fee, usually about $20. The winner gets a small cash prize and publication. Winning the "right" contest can launch a career.) My friend was just plain wore out. She had taken on considerable student debt to get her MFA and she has spent hundreds of dollars in fees and postage. She has a love/hate relationship with the mailman. She was hoping for The Letter but she knew that he may be bringing a rejection letter. She said sometimes she wants to give up writing.

Here is my advice to her. I sent it in an email which I am pasting here, in case someone out there is going through the same thing.

Hey Lady,
I have been thinking about our conversation from yesterday. I don't want you to give up writing. Your work is too beautiful and too important for you to let it go. That wouldn't be fair to you; it wouldn't be fair to the poems; and it wouldn't be fair to the world. But I am thinking that maybe you should step back from trying so hard to get published.

I know that publishing is the way to take your career to the next level. I don't want to minimize what's at stake here for you. But as your friend, I am seeing the way this publishing process is eating you up. I think you should just take a break.

Give yourself a deadline for this time-out. I don't want you to let it stretch on for eternity. Maybe just for the summer. Mark it on your calendar. You will not pursue any more publishing opportunities until Sept. 1. I don't want you fiddling with the manuscript either. Spend this summer working on new poems. Seeing new things. Making fresh art.

Remember a couple years ago after The Break-Up, when I was determined to get out there and meet somebody new and I was running into knucklehead after knucklehead? I called myself being pro-active, but I was just making myself exhausted and insecure. You told me to take a break. You told me that I needed to chill, that I was in no condition to be subjecting myself to the opinion of all these random people. You gave me to the end of the year. At first it felt like I was giving up, but only two weeks after I took myself off the market, I came to understand it as the respite that I needed.

So, my dear friend. It's time for me to return the favor and give you this advice. Take a break, girl. Take a rest. It's time to take care of yourself.

xoxo,
Tayari

(artwork is called "Stifled" by Mystele, a Chicago folk artist.)