If you’ve been following 100 Rejections for the last couple of months, you’ll know that in late March, I received a rather pivotal rejection from a highly-respected agent—someone who represents both Pulitzer Prize winners and those who have enjoyed significant commercial success. (See March 29th for Initial Post: Rejections #3 & #4)
While receiving a rejection from this agent was a particular disappointment, it also proved to be a catalyzing event in that it led me to the incredibly brilliant editor Rob Bloom, whose insight and care have had a dramatically beneficial impact on my work.
But as I mentioned in Crickets and What’s Next, Rob’s critique (a 17-page editorial letter along with margin notes on nearly every one of my novel’s 321 pages) was A LOT. And because it was A LOT—I didn’t really know how and where to start.
After receiving Rob’s feedback, I spent several weeks thinking about how to approach this next draft—auditioned a number of different ideas, including the “clothesline approach” that I’d first heard about years ago—the idea being you hang a string of rope across the room, attach index cards with clothespins, and move them around as you try to sort out which chapters stay, which go, and what’s missing.
I thought about this idea for several days. Decided that to make it work, I needed really nice note cards and beautiful pens. And finding such high-quality cards and pens would obviously necessitate a trip into Seattle to shop. Maybe even two. (Translation: I was procrastinating because I was scared.) Scared I couldn’t pull the changes off—couldn’t make this book what I needed and wanted it to be. Which led to even more procrastination—and in some spectacularly ingenious ways.
Once I’d finally tired of my own hand-wringing and whining, I came back to the advice given in the very first book I read on the craft of writing: Anne Lamott’s, Bird by Bird, which I’ve excerpted for you here:
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”
In the beginning, I felt like that little duck in the first picture—trying to swim my way to the top of the manuscript from the bottom of a waterless pond. But every morning for the last two months, when the bell rings at 3:30 am, I get out of bed, make my coffee, sit down at the computer and write. And just like that, the mountain of unedited manuscript has been whittled down into a much more manageable size.
Whatever overwhelms you—whether it be a writing project, a fitness challenge, or finding a new job—it always comes down to one thing: Bird by ever-loving bird.
Onward.
It is amazing how often "bird by bird" is so relevant!! What progress. And I know that little duck. And also,I love the title of this post!