The world of writing is competitive. Millions of people dream of being published. One publisher said that they only accept eight percent of submissions. That’s eight out of a hundred. Not because the other ninety-two submissions are necessarily bad, but just because eight percent is all they can manage. So, you might be good and still not get published because there is only so much room. It can be daunting.
Applying the discipline learned in athletics to my writing is what keeps me going. No, my field of competition in sport was never as tough as ninety-two to eight, but it was still a deep field and success depended largely on who showed up on any given day. Often, I found myself going head-to-head with the best of the best, national and even world champions. In some events, I was even competitive, proving that at the right time in the right event, I could compete with, and occasionally even beat, the best in the world. Not often, mind you, but occasionally.
You can’t worry about who is going to show up. Or even what the event is going to be. All you can do is put in the training and show up for competition day to give it your best. Control what you can control; the rest is out of your hands. You do not control outcomes, only your own performance.
In CrossFit and in Judo, my two sports, there are a lot of skills to learn. You will not master them all. And many will take years to develop basic competence. You cannot rush skill development. Consistency is your only key to success. The discipline to show up and put in the work, day after day, even when incremental improvements are all that you see. You have to put your head down and embrace the grind.
Success is forged in the early morning hours of sweat and toil when no one is watching. Grit is the most essential skill: the will to work through the tough patches, the irrational belief in the face of evidence to the contrary, that the work that feels futile now will pay off in the long run. And it will. As long as you keep learning. Keep striving.
A thousand words per day. That has been the foundation of my writing training these past three years. 1,095,000 words written largely in isolation. That is the backbone of my writing practice. The daily discipline. Now, with this base, I am stretching myself by challenging myself to write to open calls for anthologies. To write to themes and word counts prescribed by publishers instead of my own whims. Why? Because it is easy to write without parameters. It is like doing your favourite exercise in the gym or always lifting the same weight or running the same distance. Your body adapts, and the task becomes easy. And to improve, you need to challenge yourself. Stretch yourself outside your comfort zone.
These submission opportunities are an opportunity to grow my writing muscles. In CrossFit or in Judo, until you have competed, you have not truly internalized the sport. Win or lose, competition will unlock a new level of performance. Actually, truth is, you learn more in the losses. And so many people dread the pain of losing so much that they avoid competition, denying themselves the most valuable growth opportunity.
So, that’s what these weekly anthology submissions are about. They are training opportunities. At the very least, I am developing my writing skills and adding work to my catalogue, which will eventually appear in an anthology of my own writing even if I have to self-publish it in order to see it in print. Win. I am also building a back catalogue of stories that may be submitted for other future open calls. Win. And if the event favours me or my work is stronger than the rest of the field, I might even get a story accepted. Win.
In sport, very few of us should expect to come out of the gates winning. I coach my first-time competitors not to even think about the podium. At their first competition, I want them to focus on soaking up the experience rather than worrying about their performance. That will come later. Keep your expectations realistic when you are first starting out. Before you start winning, you must first put in the time. Victory comes to those who persevere. The truth that you learn as a competitive athlete is that there really is no way to lose in competition. As they say, you win or you learn. Either way is a net positive.
And here is one more piece of perspective: unlike soldiers, stories have more than one life to give. Even if they fail in their mission to be accepted for publication, they do not die on the field of battle but return to you to fight again. Published or not, they can be deployed ad infinitum. Once they are written, they are yours to use for the rest of your life. An army that only grows, never shrinks. An engine of IP to serve you tirelessly. How then can you lose? Only by giving up. Only by allowing rejections to mean something.
CrossFit founder, Greg Glassman, used to say he could ask people new to CrossFitter to write down their goal and put it in an envelope. Ask them to open it six months later and they would be surprised that no matter what they had written there, their CrossFit experience would have helped them reach it.
I’ve certainly seen this with the people I train. Whether their goal was career-oriented, personal relationships or mental health, CrossFit training has the power to make profound changes in every aspect of your life. Personally, I came to CrossFit with athletic and later vocational goals. It delivered on both and continues to do so. Though I have been writing all my life, it never occurred to me to connect that to CrossFit, and yet, here I am, a couple decades later, applying the discipline, grit and drive I developed through CrossFit to my writing practice. Looks like Glassman is right again.
Here’s how my writing week has gone:
Soiled Undies: Have expanded the story by 2500/4000 words in the quest to reach the 50,000 word minimum required by the literary agent. 1500 more words to go.
Anthology Submissions this week:
The Best Kind of Monster – created to the Pet Monster theme for Raconteur Press
Leftovers – submitted to Cahava
Lemon Tigers – submitted to Fieldstone Review
Backcountry Adventures – created for the Vacation From Hell theme for Iron Fang Press
The Day Mama Died – submitted to DNP Quarterly
Substack:
Posted “If the Shoe Fits” my final story from the Not the Tales You Remember collection of fairy tale retellings:
https://brainsoupfic.substack.com/p/if-the-shoe-fits
