Shooting at Moving Targets

It’s award season.

In the last week of May I entered two debut novel awards (Bath Debut Novelist Award & the Bridport Prize), one short story award and submitted to two literary journals—one of which already came back to me with a rejection. That one stung a bit but at least it was quick. (I’m actually quite proud of the story itself so I posted it here earlier this week. If you haven’t already, please go back and give it a read)

I’ve also got my eyes pointed towards the Sargeson prize which has a deadline at the end of this this month and the Michael Gifkins Prize which has entries opening up at the end of next month.

This tight cluster of external deadlines has put a squeeze on my self imposed deadline to finish a revised draft of my novel by June 20th, and that’s without mentioning a looming Visa that’s up for renewal, among a host of other time compressing things going on in my life at the moment.

So why do it?

Chances are, I’ll get rejected for most of, if not all of these.

Isn’t it better to let this “season” pass by? Wait for a quieter time, wait until I’m more prepared, wait until I’m ready?

No.

Because “ready” never comes, and “busy” doesn’t amount to the sum of its parts.

The devil's advocate speaking in italics two lines above this used to have a regular spot perched on my shoulder. He’s a hard fucker to argue with because he speaks logic, but he also conveniently leaves out all of the things I’ve learnt and now know about myself.

It’s important to enter these competitions and journal entries because, ignoring the very real factor that I am actually trying to do well in these, and am confident I will eventually break through, there is a secondary benefit:

Before I entered the awards above, I already had an outline for my novel. Now I have a better one.

Before I entered the awards above, I’d already carved off more fat from the opening to this plot than I thought possible. Now I’ve carved off more.

Starting to see my point?

While I already had a plan laid out on how I’m going to complete this latest draft I’m working on by mid June, the pressure, criteria and focus that these deadlines imposed on me, have given me a better plan. This compressed period of stricter than usual work has resulted in a reprioritization that will save me time.

I don’t need to do a lot of the things that I thought I needed to do when I was mapping out my schedule in the cosey warmth of limitless time, the soft ambience of “I’ll take care of this in the future.”

This is why entering these competitions is so important.

Where did I pick up this logic?

In Jiu Jitsu, I’ve had varying success in the competitions I’ve entered. To be perfectly honest, I don’t enjoy the process. The extra fitness, the dieting, the strain on both the body and the schedule. It’s pretty awful when you’re in it. But I’ll keep doing them.

Why?

Because every time I enter one of these competitions, it clears out all the noise. It wraps the blinders over my ears and eyes and lets me consider my game practically.

Hey maybe don’t waste time practicing that flying move that you think looks cool.

Hey maybe stop letting people get an advantageous position on you, so that you can “problem solve” how to find your way out of it.

What are you good at?

How can you broaden that?

How can you steer things away from your weaknesses?

Then the competition comes. Win or lose. You recognize what worked, what didn’t. Come Monday when you’re back in the gym, your skill level has skyrocketed by about thirty percent.

That’s just the way it works.

And in a similar vein to my deadline chat above, late last year when I was working through the stressful rollercoaster of job interviews and a stretched budget, I made the counter-intuitive decision to pay entry fees for a jiu jitsu competition.

Not because I wanted to. Not because I had extra money, or time. But because busy doesn’t amount to the sum of its parts.

All that extra pressure, all that extra weight, took away the weight of the things that were stressful in my immediate life.

Some people turn to drugs, some smoke a cigarette to take the load off, I guess I just dive into masochism.

The Cost

But to reap those outsized rewards, you’ve got to put yourself through it. Sacrificing downtime, social time, mental energy and creative energy for this unlikely goal.

Often forking out for entry fees you’ll never recoup.

Often bending to criteria that doesn’t favour your skillset.

I won’t sugar coat the reality that it’s unpleasant, and sometimes unrewarding.

But this is the Stanford Marshmallow experiment. This is delayed gratification to the extreme degree. Over the course of years, maybe decades, the accumulation of those secondary benefits will eventually translate to primary benefits, and that is when you break through.

And this isn’t some sentence being passed. It’s not set in stone that you’ll be waiting around for decades to get your shot. Maybe someone will see it earlier than expected, maybe you’ll break through over night. But that’s really just a bonus (and can even be a curse if it too comes early).

In truth the secondary benefit is actually, the primary benefit. The primary is just the thing that allows you to keep doing this thing.

At some point here I switched to second person POV, but I guess in truth, I’m talking to myself. This in combination with my devil talk is probably a sign of something unhealthy, so I’ll stop before I go off the deep end. But I just wanted to share some of the reason that’s lead to this strange rhyme I’m singing.