Why Publishing Is Like Dating
The similarities are eerie!
I’m in the middle of the residency period for the Antioch Low-Residency MFA program where I just began teaching, so I’ve been meeting with students and making a lot of silly analogies. One of my tried-and-true ones is comparing publishing to dating, in the sense that often, it’s precisely when you focus on yourself rather than being so preoccupied with finding the right person / publication that you end up being in a relationship / getting published.
There are a few reasons for this, I think, the main one being that submissions can be a huge distraction from work, not necessarily the logistical part itself, but the waiting and the checking and the not being able to focus, which weirdly mirrors being obsessed with that crush and checking your phone for texts all the time. Over the course of my dating life, I figured out that it’s useless to focus on things in life I have no control over and more important to focus on being happy with myself regardless of whether or not I’m with someone. And after being single for several years, dating again for its own sake rather than needing to feel validated led to the happy marriage I’m in now.
My writing career has followed a similar trajectory. After spending years being obsessed with getting published as a way to validate my identity as a writer, I realized how getting that plum byline or book deal was so much less important than being satisfied with my work for its own sake, and that I would keep writing for myself regardless of how the world sees my work. It was after several years of being in that state of mind that I ended up writing a single op-ed that got widely shared, which led to more opportunities to write for publications. After being frustrated about the agent-finding process, I decided to focus on producing work I was satisfied with, and eventually agents ended up contacting me, and I found myself signing with Seth Fishman, who I love.
So if you find yourself frustrated with either or both your dating and writing life, I say focus on being happy without the need for the validation of a relationship or publication. In my experience, good things happen when you’re not looking!
~M.