This Is What I Look Like Naked
Hi readers. That was my attempt at a click-bait headline. Whadaya think?
I bet if my name was Emily Ratajkowski, this post would’ve gone mega-viral already. Heck, the super-sexy supermodel’s new book, My Body, was an instant New York Times best-seller. Is anyone surprised?
Being born a beautiful female, as we all know, is the most potent form of privilege. You won’t hear any complaints from me on that score. I’ll be the first to admit I’m sucker for a pretty face.
But for those of us not fortunate enough to be blessed with model or movie star beauty and the fame it often confers, the other great grantor of privilege in the publishing world is celebrity. There’s the kind that comes from its own pursuit, via Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. And then there’s the kind that comes when someone is caught in the spotlight, aka the news cycle, by crisis or calamity — a traveling business woman held hostage for ransom, let’s say, or the girl whose grandmother is missing after the collapse of her apartment building, or some poor soul who was trapped for days in the rubble of an earthquake and lives to tell about it.
The Heartbreak of Rejection But if you’re an unknown author who’s lived a relatively unscathed life, except for suffering the slings and arrows of a writer’s existence, then your road to the big time is destined to pass through the dark valley of rejection. And that can make you feel, well, naked. Vulnerable. Just like the guy in Rodin’s sculpture, sitting bare-assed on a cold, hard rock totally out in the open, exposed to the harsh glare of ruthless judgment. The only antidote is to dive deep into his own thoughts about his next story — the one that will be on just the right topic, at just the right time, delivered in words so well-chosen, eloquent and and compelling that no right-minded editor could reject them.
Yes, that picture is what I looked like yesterday, when I had an essay rejected by The New York Times. It was a nice rejection letter. “Because of the large volume of submissions, we have to reject many excellent essays every day,” the letter said. Of course I seized on the word “excellent.”
“Please feel free to offer (your story) to other publications,” the letter said in closing. “And please consider submitting again in the future.”
What’s that? You’re inviting me to submit again in the future? You’re not shutting the door in my mopey, rejected face?
My Heroes It’s at times like these that I try to look at the bright side, which is a learned trait for a guy like me.
I think of my beloved Emily Dickinson, who went pretty much unknown throughout her lifetime, getting only a small handful of her nearly 1,800 poems published before she died.
I think of my hero F.X. Toole, who wrote for decades and decades, getting nothing but rejection slips before finally getting a story published.
F.X. Toole was a pen name for Jerry Boyd, who was a long-time boxing trainer and cut man — the guy in the corner who frantically applies Vaseline and ice to battered fighters’ faces between rounds. Toole gave the brutal sport a try when he was in his late 40s. He thought it would be less painful than writing. It it wasn’t.
I’ll never forget the time I heard him interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air show. Toole told Gross he quit writing, asking himself “Why am I ruining my life?” Having his stories rejected, Toole said, “would just put me flat on my face.”
Worse “than a broken nose?” Gross asked.
“Absolutely. No comparison. I’d take a broken nose any old day,” Toole answered. “To sit there, you know, with that brown envelope in your lap and your head in your hands and you say to yourself, ‘Who am I kidding? I’m no good. If I was any good, somebody would have bought this.’”
But then, he added, “not suddenly, but slowly, I’d get back to my feet, another story would play before my eyes, and I’d be back again.”
When he was 70, Toole’s ship came in. A publisher accepted a collection of his stories called “Rope Burns: Tales from the Corner.” It became a runaway best seller before being adapted into the Oscar-winning movie “Million Dollar Baby.”
I also turn for inspiration to an interview of Philip Roth by Scott Raab that I read in Esquire years ago. When asked how he dealt with his struggles as an author, Roth said, “I have a slogan I use when I get anxious writing, which is quite a bit. The slogan is, ‘The ordeal is part of the commitment.’ It’s one of my mantras. It makes a lot of things doable.”
So now here I sit, about 24 hours from my latest rejection letter. Not received in a brown envelope from the U.S. Postal Service like F.X. Toole got, but by email in my in-box. Here I sit, like the naked dude in the picture, repeating Philip Roth’s mantra: “It’s part of the commitment. It’s part of the commitment.”
I’m two years younger than Toole was when he died, and 15 years younger than Roth. The clock’s ticking. But so are these fingers, and this old brain.
It’s thinking, “Thanks for your kind rejection letter, New York Times. I will most definitely consider submitting again in the future.” I can feel the perfect story coming right now.
