The Third Time Isn’t the Charm

Today, I learned that I wasn’t accepted to a writer’s retreat I have applied to for three years in a row. The third time isn’t the charm.

My first thought was that it was because I wasn’t a good enough writer. Thankfully, I believe in myself more than I believe that.

I know the issue isn’t my writing. At least, I don’t believe it is. Rejection doesn’t suddenly erase everything I have written, everything I have learned, or everything I still have to say. Being chosen for a retreat is not a measurement of my worth as a writer. But knowing that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It was a letdown.

I still have another writer’s retreat ahead of me, and I know I will learn a great deal from that experience. I am grateful for that opportunity. But I think it is important to acknowledge that disappointment can coexist with gratitude. I can be excited about one opportunity and still be disappointed that another one didn’t happen.

Self-doubt is something every writer deals with. I’ve never been particularly good at tamping mine down. I know where mine comes from. It comes from a very dark place.

Knowing its origins has helped me. Understanding why certain words still have the power to get inside my head has given me some distance from them. For years, though, those words became stains I couldn’t wash away. I believed the horrible things that had been said to me. Even when I knew they were damaging me, it was easier to withdraw. Easier to isolate. Easier to disappear for a while than to risk being seen and judged again.

Not long ago, a rejection like this might have sent me there. Today, it sent me to my keyboard. I started reshaping Chapter One of What Walked the Boreen. Not because the original draft was bad. It wasn’t. I needed somewhere to put what I was feeling, and I found myself thinking about Ria. Ria is carrying her own losses. She has lost her mother. Her marriage has ended. Her future is uncertain. She is trying to figure out who she is when the life she thought she was building no longer exists as she imagined it would.

Today, I understood a little more about that feeling. I don’t know yet if what I’ve written is the direction I ultimately want Ria to go. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. That’s one of the privileges of writing a first draft—or rewriting one. I can change my mind. But even if I throw every word I wrote today away, it served a purpose. I put the bad energy somewhere. I released it through the keyboard instead of letting it consume me. That matters.

I have always wanted to write. Stories have been part of my life for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is my grandmother telling me a story about Myrtle the Turtle. It was based on a song, but the story stayed with me. I remembered it for years. When I eventually created the town of Myrtle in my novel The Five, I suppose some small part of that little boy listening to his grandmother was still there. I’ve been writing stories for as long as I can remember, too.

I remember reading some of them aloud to my friends at lunch in high school. At the time, I didn’t know where those stories would lead. I certainly couldn’t have known that one of them would eventually evolve into Ashen Skies, a novel I am drafting now. Maybe that is the thing I need to remember on days like today. The stories were there before the retreats. Before applications. Before rejection letters. Before I ever wondered whether anyone else thought I was good enough. The stories were there because I needed to tell them.

The hardest part has never been writing. It has been believing I deserve to be heard. Putting myself out there has been difficult. Allowing myself to be seen authentically has been even harder. There is a particular vulnerability in saying, This is something I made. This is something I believe in. This is a piece of me. Please read it.

And then waiting to find out whether someone else believes it is worth their time. That vulnerability is frightening. But I need to keep doing it.

In some ways, I think I am trying to make up for what I have lost. Maybe that is why I have so many stories to tell. There are so many characters waiting for me. So many places I want to explore. So many ideas that have lived in my head for years, waiting for their turn. I don’t want to lose any of them.

So, yes, it sucks not being chosen. It really does. I’m allowed to say that. I’m allowed to be disappointed. I’m allowed to wonder what might have been. I’m allowed to feel that familiar voice of self-doubt creeping in and telling me that maybe I’m not good enough. But I don’t have to believe it. And I don’t have to disappear because of it.

I get to choose what happens next. Today, I chose to write. I chose What Walked the Boreen. I chose Ria. I chose the keyboard instead of isolation.

I don’t know where writing will take me. Maybe someday it will take me to a retreat I’ve dreamed about attending. Maybe it will take me somewhere I haven’t even imagined yet. Maybe it will simply take me from one story to the next, one chapter to the next, one morning at the keyboard to another. I don’t know. But I know what writing does for me. It gives all those stories somewhere to go. It gives the things I’ve carried somewhere to land. It reminds me that the voices that once told me I wasn’t good enough do not get to write the ending.

I do. And tonight, I’m still writing.