My literary agent is sending my most recent book out to publishers, and I am waiting to hear whether or not I am a worthwhile human being.
This isn’t how my agent described the submission process to me. What she actually said was that she would send the proposal out to editors she thought might respond to the material. I supplied the part about the response being a verdict of my overall worth in the world.
Because here’s how I feel: If I get a book deal, I am certain I will be able to relax, that my constant striving will settle into a wholesome artistic motivation. I will know that the years I spent working on the book will have been worthwhile. I will stop wondering whether I should have spent those years doing something else. Most importantly, I will finally, finally be satisfied.
I learned a term recently on my podcast Fifty Words For Snow, where my co-host Emily John Garcés and I explore words without easy English equivalents. The term is objet petit a.
Irish philosopher Peter Rollins introduced us to objet petit a, a term from the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, often translated as the “object-cause of desire.” It’s the thing that keeps us wanting: the elusive something that we imagine will finally deliver the happiness and fulfillment we seek. The problem is the objet petit a, the desired thing, carries a promise far beyond its actual powers.
The book deal is my objet petit a. A publishing house can offer me a contract, but what I’m really asking for is relief from the sense of “lack” in existence. It’s a lot to ask from an acquisitions editor.
The View From Here
On a recent episode of the podcast, astrologer Cate Root joined us to discuss the astrological word retrograde. Cate explained that the word refers to the perceived appearance of a planet moving “backwards.” A planet goes along its orbit, but because of our changing positions as we move around the sun, the planet can appear from Earth to reverse direction against the background stars. Its apparent retreat is the result of where we are standing.
I thought this was interesting because I frequently appear, from where I am standing in life, to be going backward. People younger than me have accomplished things I was planning to accomplish when I was younger than them. Their movement becomes evidence against mine. I can be writing every day and still conclude that I am falling behind.
Kate spoke about retrograde as an invitation to review and reflect. What have we hurried past? What has happened that we haven’t taken time to understand? She wondered why we were so interested in what would happen next when there was so much we hadn’t absorbed about what had already taken place.
For my book, I have spent years investigating something that mattered deeply to me, following questions I couldn’t leave alone, trying to write honestly about experiences I didn’t fully understand. Now I was allowing a handful of responses to my work to determine what all of it had been worth.
A Future Stranger
During the interview, Cate said something I just loved. “What if,” she asked, “my accomplishments are not at all why I’m here on Earth?”
She talked about hoping to write a book that might someday help someone, as opposed to the possibility of helping someone available to her right now. Why should the opportunity to matter always be waiting on the other side of an accomplishment?
Kate told us she came to this understanding while her mother was dying. She had noticed herself withdrawing from moments with people she loved because she wanted to write about them. “Why am I choosing a future stranger that might read my work over this person who gave birth to me, who’s sitting next to me right now?”
Cate said she still wanted to write and connect with future strangers, but that she thought she would have more to offer those strangers if she stayed fully with the people beside her. I thought that was just great and exactly what I needed to hear.
Of course I want my book published. I’ve worked hard on it. I want readers, and I want the particular pleasure of hearing that something I wrote helped someone feel less alone. I love the idea of future strangers and the magical possibility of connection. But I can practice some of what I hope is the wisdom in my book now before anyone agrees to print it.
Emily and I discussed getting matching “Be the Book” tattoos, an image of an open book with the phrase in calligraphy — an image that could remind us that accomplishments are less important than who we are when doing the accomplishing.
But for now, I am trying to “be the book” without the tattoo. My agent is sending out the proposal. I am waiting. Whatever the publishing houses decide, they’ll be deciding about a book. Whether I am a worthwhile human being was never theirs to answer.