The situation
I’ve spent five years writing a novel, and it’s finished, but I keep finding reasons not to send it to literary agents. If it’s rejected, I think it will prove I’ve wasted all that time, and I can’t bear the idea of friends knowing I tried and failed.
Your situation, reframed
AI interpretationAfter five years, the novel carries a great deal of weight, and it makes sense that you want to protect it. But you have tied together two different things: the work, which is yours and finished, and the agents’ decisions, which are not yours at all. Keeping the book in a drawer doesn’t protect it from failure; it guarantees the one outcome you can learn nothing from.
The dichotomy of control
AI interpretationYours to act on
- Sending the manuscript
- How carefully you prepare each submission
- How you interpret a rejection if one comes
- Whether you keep writing
Not yours
- Agents’ tastes and how full their lists are
- The state of the publishing market
- What friends think about you trying
- How long it takes to hear back
The Stoics said
Verbatim from the source · full citationsSeneca, On Peace of Mind 13
… I will set sail unless anything happens to prevent me, I shall be praetor, if nothing hinders me, my financial operations will succeed, unless anything goes wrong with them. This is why we say that nothing befalls the wise man which he did not expect—we do not make him exempt from the chances of human life, but from its mistakes, nor does everything happen to him as he wished it would, but as he thought it would: now his first thought was that his purpose might meet with some resistance, and the pain of disappointed wishes must affect a man’s mind less severely if he has not been at all events confident of success.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 13
If you would improve, submit to be considered without sense and foolish with respect to externals. Wish to be considered to know nothing: and if you shall seem to some to be a person of importance, distrust yourself. For you should know that it is not easy both to keep your will in a condition conformable to nature and (to secure) external things: but if a man is careful about the one, it is an absolute necessity that he will neglect the other.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.18
Penetrate inwards into men’s leading principles, and thou wilt see what judges thou art afraid of, and what kind of judges they are of themselves.
What this means here
AI interpretationSeneca, On Peace of Mind 13
Seneca recommends attaching a quiet condition to every plan: I will do this, unless something prevents me. It is not pessimism. It is a way of committing fully to the effort while admitting honestly that the result is partly in the hands of chance. As the passage goes on to argue, disappointment hurts far less when you were never staking everything on success.
Translation note: A praetor was a senior Roman magistrate; Seneca is listing ordinary ambitions of his day. Fortune means chance.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 13
Epictetus is writing about progress in philosophy, but the principle carries over to any serious attempt: you cannot improve while also guarding your image. Anyone who tries something difficult will sometimes look foolish to other people, and he advises accepting that as part of the price. The fear of what friends will think is a fear about something outside your control, and at the moment it is quietly making your decisions for you.
Translation note: Externals are things outside your own will, such as reputation, other people’s opinions and results.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 9.18
Marcus turns the fear of judgement around. Look closely at the people whose verdict you dread, he advises himself, and consider how well they judge even their own lives. The friends you imagine judging you are not such reliable judges, and most of them are busy with fears of their own. Their opinion of whether you tried and failed is not a court worth handing five years of work to.
Translation note: Leading principles means the values and reasoning that guide a person.
The three passages separate the attempt from the result. Seneca shows you how to commit fully while holding the outcome lightly. Epictetus accepts that looking foolish at times is part of getting better. Marcus shows that the judges you fear are less impressive than they seem. A rejection would tell you something about one agent’s list in one month; it could not show that the five years were wasted, because the writing was the part that was yours.
One action for today
AI interpretationAct with a reserve clause
This week, choose five agents whose lists suit your book and send your submission to all five, adding a reserve clause as you send each one: I will find a home for this book, if nothing prevents it. Decide now what you will do with a rejection, for example sending to the next agent on your list within a week, so that a no becomes the next step rather than a verdict.
A line to carry
“If you would improve, submit to be considered without sense and foolish with respect to externals.”
— Epictetus, Enchiridion 13