"Hindsight is 20/20"

Clarity

Sometimes my writing isn’t as brilliant as I imagine. The first time I pitched a project to an agent I was face to face with a tough cookie who had boasted about her intolerance for “time wasters.” In a mere fifteen minutes I was to lay out the glories of my proposal and humbly tout my worthiness in hopes that she would choose to represent me.

All of this was new to me. Not only had I never done anything like that before, I had never even talked to anyone who had. And I had never so much as read anything about how to do it.

I was totally unprepared. Lesson number one, “you don’t know what you don’t know,” so do your homework any time you face a new experience. Especially when the heart and soul of your work is on the line. And I guess lesson number two would be, if you’ve heard something unflattering about an agent, don’t discount it. Even if she is the only one available for your genre, try hard to find someone else.

She stopped me early into the allotted time in the midst of stuttering and stumbling my way through the spiel. She told me that she had absolutely no interest in what I was saying, it was boring to her, she didn’t know what point I was trying to make and she had no idea why she should bother with the project.

I was stunned, so shattered that it was all I could do to “zombie” my way through the next three days of the conference. It’s not that I had never experienced rejections before. There had been articles I pitched to newspapers that had been turned down and contest entries that had gotten no response. But this was a whole new level. This was a brutal beat down.

After the initial shock wore off, I wondered what my next move should be. Deciding to consider it a learning experience, I dug in to what it meant to learn from an experience like that, let hindsight become 20/20.

Since 1862 the “Snellen chart” has been used to measure acuity of vision. The chart, often seen in exam rooms, has eleven lines of blocks letters that diminish in size as the lines descend toward the bottom of the chart. The ability to read the letters accurately from 20 feet away, with one eye and then the other, indicates 20/20 vision.

An idiom website, Know Your Phrase, reports the earliest spotting of the use of “Hindsight is 20/20” was from 1986 in an article in the Australian newspaper Canberra Times in reference to a chess game move.

What clarity of vision might we hope for on the other side of a disappointing outcome? It seems “Hindsight is 20/20” has taken on a tone of defeat and embittered resignation, bringing a full cadre of harsh judgment and self-incrimination. We conclude lost opportunity, lost cause.

It doesn’t have to be so.

During a recent bout with rejection, there was one voice that was a lifeline to me. An agent who declined to represent me kept me a little longer after the formal interview. He asked me what authors I was reading that would inform my work and made some book suggestions. He pointed out specific problems with my manuscript and offered some positive comments about its strengths. I took those things to heart, went home and got to work.

I wish I’d thought of asking for more specifics and suggestions from my previous rejection experiences. Holding fast to the nuggets of constructive criticism is one way to positively engage hindsight.

What else can we glean?

Reassessing our support systems, discovering who and what do we need to become our best writing selves will move us forward to our next steps. We can brainstorm what might make a difference: a writers’ group, more access to research, greater sources of inspiration?

When we come to a dead-end we’re forced to find new avenues to reach our destination, new ways, new goals, new starts. What might that look like for you?

Our capacity to choose our response may be one of the most valuable gifts of all. We’re always changing and we get to decide what that looks like: a stronger self, a more patient self, a more humble self, a wiser self, all huge plus factors.

Rejection is a loss of sorts. It’s important to grieve a little. It may even be necessary. But let’s not leave matters there. Even a total loss, which some say is never the case because we can always squirrel away our acorn ideas for a later oak tree…even a total loss can be understood as a powerful law of redemption waiting to happen. A black hole may become the womb of a whole galaxy of stars.

What new avenues are opening up for you?

Writing Prompt For the Week: Clarity