“The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica”: How to Maintain a Lifelong Writing Practice
Sara Lippman of the Writing Co-Lab on "candid strategies for perseverance"
Today’s post is in the tending section, which is a mix of essays and interviews about creative practice that do a deeper dive into a particular craft element or process question.
We’ve recently featured some really great writers, including , who offered guidance about writing “housemates and roommates and strange uncategorizable friendships and mentorships,” (and whose novel Housemates is a 🎉national bestseller🎉) and Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn, who wrote about digging into the contradictions in her gorgeous memoir Loose of Earth (which was just featured on Zibby Owens’s Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books podcast!). Today we’ve got a guest post from Sara Lippmann of the new teaching cooperative Writing Co-Lab.
I’d love your suggestions of other writers and artists to feature in this series, so feel free to email me with ideas. You can just hit “reply” to this newsletter.
Today’s essay is a guest post by Sara Lippman, one of the founders of the Writing Co-Lab. Since Catapult announced it would be closing its classes (sob), I’ve had an eye out to see who would fill that void, and the Writing Co-Lab is doing so many great things—accessible courses on a wide variety of practical and craft issues, in a mix of formats from one day workshops in drawing a diary comic to a 4-month intensive course in the short story.
They’re doing a program this summer that I think will appeal to lots of Write More readers—the Co-Lab Summer Camp. If you’ve got your summer writing plan ready to go and are realizing you could use some more encouragement and community as you work away at those goals, I’d encourage you to check out the Co-Lab’s summer camp.
Below, Sara writes about grappling with her own early rejections and learning that she needed both to get down to work and learn from those rejections and do more to build the community that sustains a writing practice.
Sara, on the paradox of the artist’s life and learning to see creative work as a long game
The first story I ever submitted got picked up on its first shot. I was 25. The literary journal even had me at their college to read at their launch. I assumed this was the way it worked. I’d come from the world of glossy magazines (remember magazines?!) where deadlines activated me, and freelance checks sustained me (barely), and no one offered up content on fashion dos and don’ts without a contract in hand.
Of course, I was operating under the false assumption that input equals output. Work hard, and the work will be recognized – typically, through monetary compensation. I failed to see the privilege and entitlement, not to mention the patriarchal misguidedness, of such a capitalistic notion.
After that first taste of beginner’s luck, rejection set in. My uninspiring crop of MFA produced stories were met with rapid “no’s” or interminable silence. Sometimes, personalized notes slipped through, which I dutifully saved in an envelope as a teacher had recommended. If nothing else, I aspired to be a good student – and masochist.
As rejection compiled, I began to succumb to the tugs of self-pity. I sucked. I wallowed in my suckage. I should’ve considered medical school!
Cue the comparison game, the abandoning of projects, the long stretches of not writing. Of course, as much as rejection might have stung, all this drama was an expression of ego, of fragility, anxiety, and insecurity. It was self-serving. As if I somehow “deserved” recognition; in fact, I deserved nothing.
The artist’s life is a paradox: not for the thin skinned, and yet, a certain porousness is required to be alive to the detail, emotional landscape, nuance, and gesture of the worlds we write about. On the one hand, we’re told: don’t take it so personally. On the other hand, sensitivity is our superpower.
My grandparents fled Nazi Germany to make a life in New York, one rooted in the belief of possibility, that hard work pays off. The puritan ethic is, of course, a bill of goods. But I was spoon-fed the immigrant myth known as the American Dream. I’d subscribed to the tenet that success should be tangible and quantifiable. Only this is not how the world works. There is no meritocracy. When it comes to writing, there's a chasm between art and the marketplace. Intellectually, I know this. Emotionally, it’s a different story.
To strive and to want, sure – this is human nature. A friend asks, “Is it careerist to want to be read?” Of course not. Without readers, what we have is masturbation. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) Readers complete the imperative. That’s the whole E.M. Forster gig: to “only connect.” Nor is it mercenary to want to be paid for one’s labor. For as long as capitalism survives, a person’s got to eat.
Reasonable goals, yet so much of this life is beyond our control. One thing we can do is stop surrendering our self-worth to the whims of submittable.
I needed to move past external judgment and take a cold hard look inside. Ask myself: what are you trying to say? Is it vital, urgent, necessary? I needed to get down to work. To own my voice and hone it and stop trying to conform to anyone else’s. To focus on the page, pure and simple. To learn from rejection. And I needed to do more to build and sustain community, arranging my life in accordance to how I wanted to live, absent of “should.”
Bernadette Mayer’s poem, “The Way to Keep Going in Antarctica,” helped me reckon with all of this. “Be strong, Bernadette,” I told myself, in those tender moments:
Do not be afraid of your own heart beating
In AWP 2022 I moderated a panel called Nevertheless they Persisted: The Writer and the Long Game, with authors Steve Almond, Leland Cheuk, Christine Sneed and Robert Lopez. People spilled out of the room, swarmed the panelist table afterward. It was clear we’d struck a nerve.
I’m excited to continue the spirited conversation as part of the Writing Co-lab’s summer camp program with authors Danielle Lazarin, Hannah Bae and Richard Mirabella. Together, we’ll discuss candid strategies for perseverance even when it seems like that Magic 8-Ball is stuck, no matter how often we shake it, on “Signs Point to No.”
As Steve Almond says, “Your job is not to get an agent or a bestseller, it’s to outlast your doubt. That’s your job and try to enjoy the process or at least find meaning in it.”
Maintaining a Lifelong Writing Practice will take place on Wednesday, July 24th, from 8-9pm. Hope you join us!
if you’d like to try it out . . .
Read Mayer’s poem. (These are the opening lines; you can read the rest of it at the Poetry Foundation website.)
Be strong Bernadette
Nobody will ever know
I came here for a reason
Perhaps there is a life here
Of not being afraid of your own heart beating
Do not be afraid of your own heart beating
Look at very small things with your eyes
& stay warm
Nothing outside can cure you but everything's outside
What is your way to keep going?
Writing Co-Lab, founded in 2023 by Brian Gresko, Sara Lippmann, and Amy Shearn, is a teaching cooperative owned and operated by artists passionate about craft, community, creativity, and the joyous power of the written word. Co-Lab, short for cooperative laboratory, indicates our excitement and commitment to working together and with our students in providing educational experiences not seen within the traditional academic or continuing-ed landscape. Our teachers bring their unique experiences and voices to their classes, which cover a variety of topics, from preparing work for publication, to deepening discipline, trying new styles and techniques, and cultivating fun in the writing process. Taking time to develop your art is a deeply rewarding experience, and it is our privilege to help you on that journey, whether you are looking for renewed vigor on the way, or are about to take your first steps.
Write More, Be Less Careful is a newsletter about why writing is hard & how to do it anyway. I’m so glad you’re here.
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"One thing we can do is stop surrendering our self-worth to the whims of Submittable"--Amen! I am taking a break from submitting my poems for a few months, as I was definitely starting to feel like I was measuring my worth as a writer (and a person?) by my "acceptances." Also, always happy to see some love for Bernadette Mayer :)
It is so hard not to get caught in the end goal. Great reminder!