AM I GOOD AT THIS?

When you ask kindergarteners to raise their hands if they are good at painting pictures, almost all would raise their hands. YES, I am!

Gather the same group ten years later, when they are now teens. A small number would still raise their hands. Fast forward ten more years, and these folks are now in their mid-twenties. In most cases none would raise their hands.

Any objective viewer would say that on the whole, these individuals' painting skills have improved. The disparity is subjective. The years have added the accumulated weight of criticism and self-consciousness.

When a writer on a virtual chat board asked if there is a point where you know you are a good writer, most responded that there isn't. Not really. And not one point.

~~~

My first rejection was a personal rejection, and it was a very kind one. I was not aware of the mounds of slush-subs that never got a personal response. It was a rejection, and that was not a good thing.

But others spoke of years of form rejections, and I considered that maybe I could possibly be somewhere near the periphery of the edge of the ball park.

I’m forever grateful to that editor who wrote a long and very encouraging rejection. That kept me going through almost a year of forms, which followed.

When I got the first acceptance, I was told it was one in three hundred. The small publisher had a “call for manuscripts” in a writers’ magazine, and mine got to the top of that heap somehow. Perhaps, just-possibly-maybe, I was where I belonged.

DD just went through the arduous process of auditions to top music conservatories. She was accepted everywhere she auditioned and will be making music at Juilliard come next fall. A pianist friend, who had just as much parental support and validation, was turned down by all but one conservatory, where he got off the wait-list and enrolled. DD seems less confidant in her abilities that her friend is in his.

My point? Outside validation is only one piece of the puzzle.

*But it is a vital piece.*

At some point we need others’ validation. Hopefully, it would not come posthumously. (Think of John Kennedy Tool who could not get his novel published, but when it was, after he had taken his own life in desperation, the novel won a Pulitzer prize.) It may come from an editor's letter, one who isn't your cousin’s best friend. It may come with or without $$. It may come in drips and drops. But some validation from someone who does not owe you anything is a needed.

And when it comes, will you know then?

Not necessarily. It’s one piece of a puzzle. But, speaking for myself, it is an essential piece.