Sisyphus and The Writing Career

I’ve read a lot of disparaging articles about the usefulness (and lack thereof) of creative writing degrees, but none of those pontifications talk about what happens outside of lesson plans and endless workshops. You often hear how solitary a profession creative writing is, and the chance to learn something from your peers is incalculably valuable.

The most important thing I learned in my seven years of writing education (eight if you count that writing class I took in high school!) was when one of my teachers looked at the class and said, “You know, the biggest lie of this industry is that once you get published, it gets easy.”

Here was my teacher, a man who I was pretty sure was a genius, who had a book (a book! my eighteen-year-old mind marveled) on the shelves at real bookstores, telling me that he still had to submit manuscripts to publishers; that he still got rejection letters for short stories or articles; that he was still working, every day, to make a career out of his creative writing.

Sisyphus is hardly an unknown metaphor. Punished for his sins in life, he spends all day laboring to shove a giant boulder up a mountain. He sweats, moans, rips the tendons in his legs, and slowly, inch by inch, the boulder rises. He reaches the top of the mountain as the sun sets, and collapses into exhausted sleep on top. In the morning, he wakes up at the bottom of the mountain, his boulder resting mockingly beside him.

Writing? Yeah, it’s pretty much that.

We slave over our work, agonize over every line, bring each character into glorious focus. We perfect, we trim, we massage, we polish. And all of this happens before we even touch the boulder. This is us dreaming, like Sisyphus sleeping peacefully at the top of the mountain. At dawn we “rise” – we send the story out. Here we push the boulder up the mountain. We have to be so sure of ourselves that we believe we aren’t wasting our time submitting and querying; but we also have to know rejection is coming, because if we don’t when it comes we might lose our hold, and the boulder will crush us like a bad cartoon character as it tumbles free down the mountain. So we struggle, and sometimes we fall, but sometimes – we reach the mountain top.

Homer never told you how beautiful the view is up there. Sisyphus might be bound to his task as punishment, but we know the work is worth it. When you stand on that cliff face, the land rolling out below you, sun on your face, you understand what beauty is. There is glory in it, and pride, and above all, transcendent joy. And then you lie down, to sleep, and dream another story.

And wake up at the bottom. And do it all again.

Is it exhausting? Yes. It is painful? Yes. Are there times with the boulder rolls over you and you wonder what kind of a self-punishing maniacal masochist would enter into a profession that requires a constant stream of being told you just aren’t quite good enough? Yes, yes, yes.

Is it worth it?

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.