A Thousand Times No!

Did you happen to see Ben Percy’s column in Poets & Writers (Sept/Oct 2019)?

The title is “The Turn – Harnessing the Generative Power of No.“

He writes of his personal experience as a freshman at Brown and his failings as a student. Like so many, he spent his first semester discovering the joy of his new-found freedom and enrolled in a computer science curriculum for which he had no interest, background or aptitude. At the end of the term his advisor, (also his Computer Science professor) warning him that his scholarship was at risk, dismissed him after suggesting that college isn’t for everyone. As an aside, he commented that he was surprised at Percy’s failing, only because Percy’s entrance essay was one of the best he’d read.

As Percy sifted through the ashes of his failure he seized upon that offhand comment. He enrolled the following semester as an English major.

With his wife about to give birth to their first child, Percy’s first attempt at a novel was shopped to editors to exhaustion. Feedback suggested that editors liked the parts but not the whole of his story. In an act of exasperation, he dumped it in the digital trash. The next day he retrieved it and began to understand why it had been rejected. Focusing on the parts, he re-fashioned the writing into several short stories, one of which would go on to appear in Best American Short Stories.

His point –listen to, and identify, the opportunity inherent in the word “no.” Take the nugget within the feedback and re-imagine your work.

Some might find his experiences merely serendipitous. But perhaps Percy has honed a skill that allows him to recognize the opportunity to pivot.

In each instance, Percy was at a rock-bottom moment – a college scholarship on the line, a wife about to give birth to their first child, and, after he absorbed the brunt of his failure, some tiny sliver of recognition rang true within the rejection. He wrote an excellent college essay. The small parts of his novel that editors liked were actually short stories.

When people tell me “no” my typical response is to silently swear at them and pout. I might eventually find the psychic space to hear the feedback but I’ve done a lot of wound licking before I get there. Percy doesn’t deny that “no” can be crippling to hear. He doesn’t give every “no” the same credence or authority. He understands that the process to get to the pivot point is not immediate, the point of identifying and recognizing the opportunity takes time to uncover.

I can’t get on board with the joy of hearing no. I can’t join in his enthusiasm to “see what I build out of the wreckage of last week.” But I do agree that “the only failure is to stop trying.”

Percy’s column appears in the print only version of Poets and Writers.