“You are so lucky.”

This is what a woman said to me last night after my reading at the University Bookstore.
Sorry, I thought. I just can’t agree with you. I wish I could.

“My daughter wants to be a writer. How does she get started?”

“If I told you,” I said, “I’d have to kill you.” I laughed.

She didn’t.

“I’m kidding!” And stalling, I thought, because nearly every time I’m confronted with this question, what is really being asked is how one gets published, and this question makes me queasy. So whenever the question shows up lately I say, “Tell her to write.”

“Yes, but, I mean, how does she get published?”

See.

“Tell her to keep writing,” I said.

No one wants to hear this. In their view writing is publishing. Success is publishing. And I don’t want to say “failure is success if you keep writing anyway” to a mother who wants only the best for her daughter.
“If she wants to publish she has to learn how to write,” I said, to keep my end up. I don’t usually venture into more reality than that. It comes off as negative.

I prefer people have fun at one of my events, hopefully.

“Thank you!” she said. “I want my daughter to be as lucky as you’ve been!” And then she threw her arms around me.

I felt like such a schmuck. I should have taken the time to say luck has nothing to do with my life, my writing, my books. Maybe someday I’ll be able to say that luck is my friend, freely, even joyfully, like this woman thinks
I should be able to say, but I’m not even close to being able to say that yet.

I’ve met lucky writers, though, ones who have bestsellers their first attempt at publishing. I am so jealous.
And if it wasn’t for trying to address this notion of luck in my life, I wouldn’t be writing this particular column. So let’s back up here, go over a little history.

Days seem to go by as I sit here ...

My first collection of poetry was rejected twenty-one times. Twenty-one. Still, I kept at it. It takes a phenomenal amount of stamina to push your first book into the living, breathing world. And it can tear your heart out along the way. Likely it will.

Finally, my manuscript was accepted by a small literary press in Eastern Washington. I admit, no use of the word “small” has ever played a larger role in my self-esteem. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of press I thought I needed at the time, but it was the kind of press I had. Then, even now, I can spend too much mental energy afraid of missing THE REAL PRESS, the press the right people would think of as serious enough, established enough, full of clout.

But I can’t allow myself to stay too long wondering about all that. Because there is no end to the ever-changing inner circle of rotating presses and people who deem themselves most important in the literary world. And no part of me can keep up with all that politicking and still find time to write.

With the first press that published me, as with the latest, I had to close my eyes and leap, believe in the press if, for no other reason, because the press believed in me. As it turned out, my first publisher was well-respected in all the “right” literary orbits, the elliptical paths a young writer yearns to circle in. Once in, it feels as if an arm of relief is linked around your waist.

Except the relief never holds you up for long. You can’t lean into it and relax in the way you thought you could. Your next writing is too pushy. And it’s up to you, alone, to push back. It’s a vicious cycle. And why I encourage young writers to take a long hard look at a few questions before embarking on a life of writing: Can you see yourself spending most hours of everyday alone? Can you take limitless uncertainty and heartache? Lots and lots of heartache?

I stare at that last line for awhile. I want to apologize for it.

But apologizing is something I stopped doing after my friend Rachel pointed out that the one thing she loves most about me, my honesty, was the one thing I keep apologizing for.

Which was so honest of her to say that I haven’t apologized for it ever since. Rachel. She allows me to be who I am. She expects me to stay that way.

“Writing,” I should have said to the eager mother of a young writer, “will do some wonderful things for your daughter. And, if she’s lucky, lucky as I’ve been, she’ll survive the rest.”

Sanelli’s latest book is Among Friends. This essay was originally written for 110: A Collection of Writing Celebrating the One Hundred Tenth Birthday of the University Bookstore.