First time here? Here’s what this newsletter is.
A note for you, if you’re having a bad day.
Dear Pal,
Another writer whose work I admire a lot texted me the other day with this question: “I just submitted a packet for a show last night and woke up full of doubt and second guessing. How do you deal with those feelings yourself when you’ve sent something out into the void for approval/rejection?”
This is a great question, because anyone who submits work for a living grapples with it at least to some extent, and it’s so hard to talk about out loud because when you talk about it you (1) have to acknowledge that you want something that’s hard to get; (2) have to acknowledge that you’re trying to get it anyway (and that you care); and (3) have to acknowledge that you don’t necessarily feel so good about yourself or about the work that you did in your attempt to get it. There is no way to statistically measure this, because it’s impossible to quantify Real Secrets, but I have a hunch that for the most part, people don’t share about the things they’re trying to accomplish, because they don’t want it to be on the public record of they fail.
I pitch a lot of places, and fail most of the time. After I send something in, I actively try to forget about it, because I know it will be rejected, and I don’t want to spend my whole day fixating on how stupid and bad the thing was that I made. When the thing is rejected (truly 90 percent of everything I submit is rejected), I am not stoic or cool about it; I basically always cry. I let the rejection ruin my whole weekend sometimes. I spent all this work on this thing, and for what? For it to sit on my hard drive forever as a reminder of how dumb and bad I am? I’m not cute with my rejections, like those people who try to get 100 rejections in a year and celebrate every one. In fact, I sort of judge those people. How can anyone pretend that a rejection could feel like anything other than terrible? HOW!? (If you’re one of those people, don’t mind me; I’m jealous. Also, I have recommended to lots of other people that they try this 100-rejections-per-year thing, and I think in theory it’s a really good idea. I just can’t quite understand how this isn’t the same as promising to cry 100 times a year.)
If you’re a person who guts themselves over trying and failing at things, I first want you to know that it’s OK to cry about it. You can’t help what you’re feeling, and that’s a normal way to feel. I also want you to know that the definitive answer to the question, “What’s the point?” is this: you are practicing.
It’s incredibly rare to be good at something the first (or second or ninth) time you try it. That’s just not how we learn things. We have to be bad at something a bunch of times in a row before we approach anything resembling success. Conceptually, that’s obvious, but I think we don’t usually look at final products as practice — and I think that’s a mistake. Everything is practice. You are always practicing.
This is not only true for creative projects — it’s also true for relationships, for talking to therapists, for keeping house, for preparing food, for processing emotions, and even for resting. Occasionally, you do these things at piano-recital-caliber, but not all (or even most) of the time. Most of the time, you’re practicing. The trouble is (and this is the chaotic, fun part about life), you don’t get to choose when you’ve reached recital-level. The universe chooses. It tends not to care how much you want something or when.
For example, my husband has been practicing for six years at dealing with me when I’m having an emotional meltdown. He has tried a lot of different things. He has a sense of what it looks like when he’s successful (I calm down), and a sense of what will get him to achieve that kind of success (he will need to ask questions, reflect back the things I’m saying, and validate my feelings), but still, a lot of the time, it doesn’t go great. Nevertheless, I notice him repeating strategies or slightly altering them; I notice how much better he is at it than he was six years ago. Some days he does a perfect job and he STILL fails, because that’s the mood I’m in that day. And some days, everything clicks into place, and he gets to feel like he got it right.
But there’s sadly no math to when these strategies are going to work the way he wants them to. The only thing that I know to be absolutely true is that every time he practices and fails, he gets better at it. Growth is not usually steady or linear, but if you look back over a vast enough timeline, you’ll see it no matter what. As long as you’re practicing, you can’t help but grow.
However, I think real practice requires failure. There have to be stakes. You have to see what is working and what isn’t in actual life, and the only way to do that is to actually do the standup set in front of a crowd, or actually bake the dessert, or actually submit the packet to the TV show for the writing job. Release the idea that you must always be “doing your best,” because there’s no way to know what “your best” really is. "Best” might involve more hours sitting in brainstorm-mode, or it might involve way fewer. The editor might buy the one article you wrote that only took you an hour — when normally, articles take you at least a week. The relationship might not be able to survive a conversation where you attempt to be vulnerable. That’s OK. I promise the practice is worth something; the payoff is out in some unknown future.
When you finally make the perfect pie, sleep a full eight hours, publish a longform essay in your favorite magazine, or find a person with whom you’ll spend the rest of your life, the truth is this: you wouldn’t have gotten there without the practice — that is, without all the times you allowed yourself to fail.
Love,
Sophie
Add this to your to-do list.
Do one small thing you know you will succeed at. Peel an orange, throw a basketball into a hoop (until you sink one), color in a fish in a coloring book, draw a big circle on a piece of paper. Whatever it is, be specific in your to do list: “write my own name at the top of a piece of paper.” Something like that.
When you see an insect or an animal out in the wild, say “hi” to it.
Find a color you really love somewhere. (A book? A magazine? A room? Your kitchen cabinet?) Decide what that color is named. (You can use one of these charts if you need help.) Remember this for the future when someone asks you about a color you like.
A drawing.
At the suggestion of a few readers, I am going to start selling limited editions of prints of images with the “You are doing a good enough job” tagline. Every week, there will be ten prints available for $8 each (including shipping). Each 5x5” print is numbered and signed. You can get the print sent to a friend with a little note if you’d like them to have a nice day. I’ll throw a few sequins and tiny stickers into each envelope, so it will feel like a present. (It’s great to give a present to yourself!) If I run out this week, there will be a new image and a new print to buy next week. Here’s the link to buy one! Be sure you click the shipping option, “WEEKLY PRINTS ONLY” at checkout, so your shipping will be free. Below is the print I’m selling this week.
Audience participation.
This is a new section, which will include a short creative prompt. You can send me your completed prompts, and if you do it within a week, I’ll publish them in the next edition (along with your name and Instagram or Twitter handle, if you want).
Today’s prompt is a writing prompt.
Write one sentence that includes as many pleasing words as possible. (A pleasing word is a word that pleases you. Some pleasing words for me are: egg, boot, meringue, satisfactory, and cackle.) Submit your sentence to sophielucidojohnson@gmail.com
What’s on my mind this week.
(This will be about pregnancy. Skip it if you don’t want to read about pregnancy.)
The regularity with which I pee at night has come to kind of amaze me. Every single night I wake up from a really weird dream at: 11:44 p.m., then again at 2:12 a.m., then again at 4:38 a.m., and then again at 6:25 a.m. For a few moments, I stay stuck in the dream; I am caught between my subconsciousness and the darkness of my real bedroom, like I’m in a kind of a spider web. I dream a lot about my exes. Depending on which ex it is, we either make up in the dream, or I am horrified that I have to spend time near them (but they don’t seem to mind). It’s my bladder that finally shakes me to life and reminds me that nothing is real except my bedroom and my need to pee, and I grab on to one of the posts of our four-post bed frame (which Luke bought me for my birthday a few years ago, not knowing that a four-post bed frame is a thing that all pregnant people should have, and that I would one day be a pregnant person), and pull myself up and on to my throbbing-with-way-too-much-blood ginormous feet, and look at my watch. Always the time is exactly the same as it was the night before. Then I pee, then I put Parks and Rec back on on my phone, and fall back asleep. (I have always only been able to sleep while playing gentle television in the background. Since sharing a bed with a human man, I’ve had to implement headphones to make this work, but the general idea has stayed the same since middle school, when I fell asleep to an actual TV set playing actual TV shows. In 2021, Parks and Rec and The Office are go-tos, so I had to subscribe to Peacock and get the app. I hate the Peacock app. It is so incredibly poorly designed. Worst of all, TV shows on the app auto-play. I only need about three minutes of the show before I’m asleep, and I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night with the show still on, so this is a major bummer. However, I have figured out TWO tricks to bypass this app-based error. If you are the same as me and need to figure out how to turn off auto-play so you can sleep at night on your Peacock app, please email me. I am very eager to share this knowledge.)
Extras.
This week I discovered the musician Green-House, who writes music for plants and for spaces and not so much for people. I like music that is the sonic equivalent of being wrapped loosely in an offensively plush blanket — like, Chopin is WAY TOO AGGRESSIVE for me. This is the best thing like that I’ve found in my life, and all week I’ve played it nonstop while writing, and I diffuse essential oil blends I buy at deep discount at Marshalls, and this is my best life.
Another huge win from this week was the Netflix remake He’s All That. I watched this on Friday night while Luke played Gloomhaven. I am not exaggerating when I say I haven’t seen a movie so terrible since The Christmas Wedding Planner, which I thought could not be beat as far as terrible movies were concerned. This one is EVEN BETTER at being worse. If you love to hate-watch unbelievably bad made-for-TV-rom-coms, this WILL NOT DISAPPOINT YOU. (This article in The Cut perfectly sums up the experience of watching this incredible film, but you my not want all the spoilers.)
The New Yorker reprinted this Joan Didion essay (from 2000) about Martha Stewart, and it’s the particular kind of delightful you think it is. (It’s also got a great watercolor by Lauren Tamaki as the feature image.)
My favorite tattoo artist is Jordan Lentz, because she does true, hardcore scientific illustration and makes it permanent. Her Instagram is a fairy land of jaw-dropping art.
I like Arnold Palmer Spindrift.