What Longevity Actually Looks Like

By Kasie Whitener

I’ve been reading the same weekly email newsletter from Canadian writer and coach Daphne Gray-Grant forever. I may be one of her longest subscribers. She’s the Publication Coach and you can find issue #847 here. 

Yes, #847 which, divided by 52 weeks a year, is 16 years she’s been delivering weekly advice to writers like me.

That’s roundabout 2006, which is when I remember finding her. I was working for SYNNEX Corporation as a copywriter, my master’s degree making me eligible to use 25-cent words when 5-cent words would suffice. But Daphne has always encouraged me to be concise and precise in my word selection and sentence structure.

This week she encouraged me to recognize where my writing imposter syndrome comes from: a non-existent continuum of writing. 

“...there’s a widely held misunderstanding that writing falls on a commonly accepted continuum of bad to good. And we all worry about doing something that’s baaaaaad,” she writes, “But, in fact, writing doesn’t operate on such a continuum. Instead, it’s a matter of taste. What I see as ‘good’ writing might not please you and visa versa.”

Ever have one of those, “Duh!” moments? Of course I know the writing I like isn’t necessarily what others like and just because others don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Earlier in the day, I’d read a writer’s tweet asking for everyone’s favorite short stories. Lots of great titles including A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Peach Cobbler by Deesha Philyaw. I scrolled through the thread looking for Hemingway and couldn’t find him. Seriously? No one said Hills Like White Elephants?

Just to prove that writing is personal and reading is subjective, my short story The Shower that won the 2022 Broad River Prize for Prose was also the submission that got me rejected from two different conferences. Also, it didn’t make the list from the favorite short stories tweeter. That doesn’t make me Hemingway.

Daphne’s point that we we think of writing on a continuum of bad to good is frustratingly true. I see my own work as inching from the left (bad) as it’s polished, workshopped, submitted, rejected, rehabilitated, resubmitted, and accepted. Accepted is good, right? Except then people read it and don’t connect with it (bad reviews) or start it but don’t finish it (abandoned) or say they’ve been meaning to read it but haven’t yet (can’t even motivate themselves to start the doggone thing!).

Just when I think I’ve written something “good” it seems increasingly likely I’ll never write anything good ever again.

But I’m still writing. And maybe, just maybe, the more I write the better I’ll get. Maybe the next piece will connect with someone. Will resonate. Will push them, like Daphne’s been pushing me, to keep at this thing. For 847 weeks or more.