Acceptable Compass

I had been writing this blog for several years when I decided to pitch an article idea to an editor I’d met at a panel a year before. She was a fellow blogger who had recently been hired to run a food magazine. When I learned she was looking for content, I thought of a food-related story I’d been wanting to write for a while and sent a pitch her way. A year went by and I didn’t hear from her. I eventually forgot I’d sent it. At this time, I never pitched article ideas to magazines. I wrote my blog and my books, did my interviews, and that was it.

Then one day an email from the editor appeared in my inbox. She said she was sorry she had taken so long to get back to me, but that she loved my blogs and loved the idea. This, I thought, was a nice opportunity. The magazine paid well, it had a good circulation, and I liked the idea of being published in good old-fashioned print. As a child of the 70s and 80s, actual paper and ink still felt more real to me than the ephemeral digital dimension where all of my work now lived.

I foresaw, however, one problem. The reason I didn’t pitch ideas to magazines is largely because I had a long and unhappy relationship to rejection. Being Author’s Editor-in-Chief, my blog was essentially self-published, which was very helpful for me. It meant I wrote without worrying whether someone else found my work acceptable. I did not understand until I began writing this column how often this idea of what was acceptable or not acceptable to others infected my writing experience. Even though this editor liked my blogs and liked my pitch idea, she hadn’t yet bought the piece. She still needed to accept it.

Before I wrote one word, I made a decision. Writing the essay for this magazine had to feel exactly like writing a blog. It had to come from the same place and have the same destination. If at any point I felt myself writing to please the editor, writing what I hoped she would find acceptable, I would stop, get up from the desk, and not work on it again until the following day. And if I was never able to finish the piece, that was okay. I was simply not going to try to please an editor or agent ever again.

As it turns out, I wrote the piece in one sitting, and she bought it the day after I sent it. I was glad to sell the piece, but I was happier for how I wrote it. I had found my compass, the internal light by which all my creative endeavors would be guided. I follow it still, and its direction has always been true. I don’t know where it’s leading me, nor do I have to. My job is to go where I’m led, and accept the guidance I’m always being given.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence.
You can find William at: williamkenower.com