Where is the line between ‘good’ for me and ‘good’ for someone else? OR Why is their opinion more important than mine?

I’m sitting on a piece of writing that I like, that my first reader really likes, and that other early readers have given a thumbs up. Yet I have still not submitted it to my desired place of publication. What exactly is my problem?

This writer’s dilemma reminds me one of my favourite scenes between Meryl Streep (playing Karen Blixen) and Robert Redford (playing Denys Finch Hatton) in the 1985 film Out of Africa:

KAREN: Why is your freedom more important than mine?
DENYS: It isn't. And I've never interfered with your freedom.
KAREN: No. I'm not allowed to need you. Or rely on you, or expect anything from you. I'm free to leave. But I do need you.
DENYS: You don't need me. If I die, will you die? You don't need me. You're confused. You've mixed up need with want. You always have.
KAREN: My God. In the world that you would make, there would be no love at all.
DENYS: Or the best kind. The kind we wouldn't have to prove.
KAREN: You'll be living on the moon then.

I have rewritten that scene between me (playing Writer) and Big Deal Editor (playing Unnamed):

WRITER: Why is your opinion of my writing more important than mine?
UNNAMED: It isn't. And I've never interfered with your opinion of your own writing.
WRITER: Not true. I'm supposed to want your opinion and that requires me to rely on your judgement of my writing. I'm free to ignore you. But I need you.
UNNAMED: You don't need me. If I ignore your submission, will you die? You don't need me. You're confused. You've mixed up need with want. You always have.
WRITER: My God. In the world that you would make, there would be no Big Deal Editors and no barriers to publication at all.
UNNAMED: Or the best kind. The kind you weren't afraid of — the kind we would each create for ourselves.
WRITER: You'll be living on the moon then. And no one will be submitting anything anywhere or will be reading anything other their own words. What kind of a world would that be?

Hmmmm. Maybe the nuances could be tweaked, but the essence of the exchange rings true to me: I want a big-deal editor to like my writing and I also want to have innate confidence in my writing without the approval-via-publication of that big-deal editor. 

My standard workaround is to publish my writing on this blog — big-deal editor’s opinion be damned. But with this one particular piece, I really want to see what the big-deal editor might say about it. I clearly have some inner work to do with this writerly foible. (Am I the only writer to have this foible? Do other creatives have similar foibles?)

Something I do know is that I really like the 50-word story below that was rejected by the editor of the site to which I had submitted it with confidence. Their mistake to reject it, say I, so here it is — with my confidence — for you to read for your own judgement.

THE PLACEBO EFFECT

Patients line up outside the doctor’s clinic. His credentials suggest wisdom, so the local people believe in him. As the sun rises, the line grows. Inside, the doctor fills vials with coloured water. The clinic opens. Patients enter, eager for healing. They leave, treated with fraud but touched by magic.

As for that other piece, I’m going to give it one more polish and then hit SEND because I like it and think it's good — and that is enough for the moment ... and maybe that BD editor will accept it. For sure, I’ll never know unless I submit it. 

Hitting SEND is its own form of confidence.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.