Am I Famous Yet?

On this blog, I primarily talk about the craft of writing well, with occasional commentary on the publishing business. But I recently joined a monthly blog hop for The Insecure Writer's Support Group, and our task is to express doubts, concerns, lessons or guidance about the emotional side of writing, so today I’m thinking about a lesson I’ve learned – and sometimes have to relearn.

This past weekend, I attended the Kansas SCBWI writing conference as a workshop speaker. They paid my airfare and put me up in a nice hotel, give me a gift basket with gourmet chocolate, took me out for great meals, and generally treated me like a star. I also got a chance to hang out with not one but two Newbery Medal winners, Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard, 2002) and Clare Vanderpool (Moon over Manifest, 2011). 

Now I think I’m a pretty good writer, but I sure don’t have a Newbery. In fact, I doubt most of the conference attendees had ever heard of me.

It’s easy to look at those “above” us and feel jealousy or insecurity – the sense that you’re not as good and never will be. But I could also look at those “below” me, the unpublished writers, and feel vanity or arrogance because I have a dozen books and people are paying to hear me speak.

Neither is the right answer. We’re in this together, and it isn’t a matter of winners and losers, published and unpublished, superstars and nobodies. Learning to write well is a process, a long one, going from beginner to more experienced to “getting good rejections” to interest from an editor to publication – and maybe eventually to award winner status. I can look in one direction and see where I’ve been. I can look in another and see where I still have room to grow. Where you are on that path doesn’t matter so much, as long as you’re still moving toward your goals.

Clare and Linda Sue were warm and delightful, by the way. Clare is working on her second novel, and though she didn’t say so, I imagine she’s feeling some pressure to make it brilliant, after winning such a major award for her first novel. Linda Sue was enthusiastic about the good she gets to do, from pro bono school visits to sponsoring a well in Africa after releasing A Long Walk to Water, her novel based on the true story of one of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan. I didn’t think to ask her where she hoped to go next, where she felt she had room to grow, but I bet she would have had an interesting answer. I bet she can still look forward, to new challenges ahead. Writing is its own long walk.