I am the most jealous person in the world. It’s never over something as frivolous as boyfriends or love though.
More than anything, I’m supremely jealous of my friends’ professional accomplishments. It’s a huge problem in my life and something I realized I really needed to work on. It’s not fun being so petty all the time.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m happy for my friends who are successful. But every article published, every movie role landed, every show booked, every book deal acquired makes my hands wring together. I’m smiling, but I’m also murderous. Like the Joker fused with Lady MacBeth, except more crazy.
The big thing is that I’m wrong. I don’t have to be jealous of my friends because all their success means is that I have the best, most talented friends in the world. I’ve started making a conscious effort to change the way I see other people’s accomplishments. Whatever good things happen to other people don’t belittle or change what I’m up to. It’s not a scale; it doesn’t take away from me, if someone I know succeeds.
Success doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It’s generally a group of really talented people who all find each other in some way — the British invasion, the Beat poets, 90s comedians, 1920’s expatriate writers in Paris, the artists of the Renaissance, East Coast/West Coast rappers.
Instead of going with my instinct to tear people down, I’m pushing myself to lift them up, to make an effort to work together, to support other successful people in my life.
This is something I have to constantly remind myself to do, but it’s really been worth it for my psyche and self-esteem.
Game recognize game, guys. All it means when the people I know succeed is that I know some pretty awesome people.
A week ago, I went out for coffee with a new friend I’d met through a part-time freelance job. She was interested in getting her writing out there more, and wanted to know how I got published so often. It’s a question I get a lot and I got it a lot today because of this article about me. Because of that, I feel like I’m misleading people.
Here’s the ugly truth (TM Katherine Heigl) that no one likes to talk about: You’re only seeing the successes.
All you see are the pieces I’ve pitched that were accepted. You’re seeing the 3-5 stories a week that I do get published. What you don’t see is that I pitch probably 10-15 pieces that get rejected.
I spend entire days putting together and researching pages and pages of pitches. In the end, I’ll probably write one of them, if I’m lucky. I pitched to two different editors of an inflight magazine for weeks, only for them to reject everything I sent. I pitch to the New York Times Magazine constantly. You see the two stories I did get published. I see the twenty-five rejections that came with it.
I did one interview with Business Insider and got coverage in the New Yorker, but I also got strung along for months by a producer at NPR who eventually decided they don’t want me on air or spent time putting together a segment for MTV News that ended up on the cutting room floor.
You see me in The Good Men Project or on Thought Catalog, but I’ve also pitched to and been rejected multiple times (so many times) by The Rumpus, HelloGiggles and The Hairpin. I’ve been told by professional editors that my writing is “dull” or “doesn’t sparkle” and by Internet commenters that I should “eat a mosquito with AIDS” or that I’m “not as clever as [I] think [I am]” or that my self-promotion is “annoying.”
If I could stress anything to young, freelance writers, it’s what I just wrote above. All you see are the successes. They are not the whole truth. They are just what I, as an egotistical writer, want you to see. Behind them, for me, there is so, so, so much rejection.
Do not let getting rejected stop you or scare you off writing. You need to throw a million things at the wall; it increases your chances that even one will stick. One is all you need.
Writing is probably 80 percent rejection, 20 percent success. Don’t let it discourage you, don’t believe for a second that other writers don’t go through this too, and don’t convince yourself that hard work, humiliation and throwing things against the wall to see what sticks aren’t the reality of this line of work.
I am rejected, embarrassed and insulted all the time.
And then you guys see one awesome published story. That’s the truth.
AS PROMISED, SUBMISSIONS ARE OPEN!
HERE ARE SOME NOTES ON THAT:
The focus of the new 100 Interviews is people. Your submission should be a piece about people. What that means is broad, open-ended and mainly up to you.
What I want: Interviews, articles, personal essays, poems, photos, short stories, Q&As, funny pieces, creative lists, drawings, ideas for columns, etc.
I’m looking for anything that showcases an undiscovered or under-appreciated aspect of humanity. By the time I’m done reading your piece, I want to have learned something about people.
Yay!
[Audio doesn’t match my mouth. C’est la vie.]
When I finished interviewing 100 people in a year, I wanted to write some kind of glorious wrap-up.
I thought maybe it could rival the Gettysburg Address in brevity and poignancy, or prove once and for all that journalism isn’t dead. It…
100 Interviews 1-Year Project: Completed. It’s the farewell address!
I did a SUPER long interview for this, but it covers basically everything. Really great!
What are you going to do when it’s over? Publish a book? Have you thought of any more people to interview?
This question was asked on 100Interviews.com, but I don’t usually answer questions there publicly so I moved it here. If you have a question for me, I will answer it here on gabydunn.com though! Promise.
Okay! As far as a book goes, I have a literary agent who signed me waaaaay back in February. When the project ends in October, I’m going to start writing and then sending out a book proposal in search of a publisher. If I get a publisher, I will publish a book with them. Hooray! If I don’t, I will probably self-publish it and offer it for sale on 100interviews.com since there seems to be some interest in seeing a 100 Interviews book.
That said, the book wouldn’t be just the interviews or even rehashing the interviews. It’d be more a memoir of how I went from the aimless journalism college graduate I was in September 2010 to the work I do now — and how the interviews and interviewees changed my life or reflected on something I’d been through in the past. (Personally, I don’t think I’m interesting enough to have a memoir, but Josh, my agent, my friend Lucas and my mom would probably loudly disagree with that to my face.) It would also be more behind-the-scenes about what went on with interviewees. (Oh boy.)
100 Interviews has changed my life in literally every single way — changed who I am, changed my work, changed my opinions, changed my focus, changed my personal life. So that could be interesting to people. (That’s for my agent/publisher to decide with me!)
As for other people to interview, I’ve received thousands of emails over the last year with people wanting to share their stories. When the 100 Interviews Year-Long Project is done, 100interviews.com will not go away. I’m going to refashion it and keep writing — and probably start accepting submissions from other writers too. (That’s sort of a secret, but now it’s not!)
I am in a little bit of a funk right now and I do not know why.
There are a few reasons I could point to but none of them are really the reason and the funk’s only been here for the past 48 hours but I could feel it coming on and I wasn’t sure how to stop it. Even after all this time.
It happens every so often. I’ll ride a high for a while — this one lasted almost a full month — and then inevitably, I’ll have the come down. Colors get dimmer. Outfits get less coordinated. Movements get clumsier. Jokes get less sparklingly witty.
Insecurity, like glitter, sticks to everything and won’t come off entirely until you’re at some get together and someone you’re talking to laughs and says, “You’ve got some glitter on your face, just there, did you know?” And then all you want to do is go home without saying goodbye to anyone and fall asleep to the light of your Macbook. Macbooks are especially good at cuddling.
When a funk comes on, everything you do seems cursed. What was once a suave, confident text message suddenly reads desperate and mistake-y, writing once funny and relevant seems dead and flat, coffee is spilled, nail polish is chipped, skin is greasy.
I feel like my funk and I are in a perpetual old Western gun fight. It stands on one end, hand perched on its gun sling, fingers dancing, ready to grip, pull up and fire at will, while I skip in place on my end delighting in the illusion that the funk might really be gone forever.
There is no Han/Greedo disparity. The funk always shoots first.
I am not a stupid person, but often I worry that I’m missing something important. While I can (and have) read books about quantum mechanics and understood them, this exchange happened the other day at a luncheon at my office.
Me: (pointing to a vegetable tray) Oh, what are those?
Confused co-worker: What are what?
Me: Those orange things. They’re super long and skinny and the top part is short and green. What vegetable is that?
Co-worker: (slowly) Are you talking about carrots?
Me: (realizing) Oh. Uh. I was joking. I know what carrots are.
Co-worker walks away, shaking her head.
Obviously, I’ve seen a carrot before. Obviously, I know what a carrot is. But I’d never seen ones that looked like that — they were cut differently and the top parts were shortened. I’d failed to recognize a carrot in front of my face.
So, what is this a metaphor for?
Lately, I’ve been trying to submit my writing to the ever-increasing number of popular women’s blogs. You know the types. A bunch of cool girls write about the Internet or their lives making sure to reference, I don’t know, bands from the late ’80s and specific episodes of ‘My So Called Life’ and Christina Hendricks from ‘Mad Men.’ They are blogs where every post is quirky or sort of apathetic or about wine or condemning rape culture, and there’s like, an ever-clicking chorus of Internet yes-women who all seem to like the same things and hate the same things and it’s all real cozy for everyone. And look, that’s totally great that women feel they can express themselves online. It’s a miracle and a haven. We’ve come a long way and rah, rah, hear us type furiously!!
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