History nearly missed out on Emily Dickinson.
We know her name now —a name made even more famous by Hailee Steinfeld’s portrayal on Apple+, but she was unknown during her time on earth.
She lived an enigmatic life and preferred her own company to others. The children in Amherst, Massachusetts called her a mystic as she scribbled away genius from her bedroom. Hard to believe, but she only published ten poems during her life, all of them under an anonymous pen name. After she died, Emily’s sister Lavinia stumbled across a cache filled with 1800 of her poems, which she delivered to a publishing house.
The rest is history.
As someone else who likes to scribble away, it’s hard to know what to make of this. Why wouldn’t you publish?
It wasn’t like she was without her reasons. She was born in 19th century America. Women didn’t write. Women didn’t vote. Poetry, well, that was a man’s game. Anything submitted to a publisher would be edited, tampered with, or worse, ignored.
All her work tarnished by the biases of her generation.
Did she do the right thing by keeping her work to herself?
Why Most People Never Start a Creative Side Hustle
I posted my first online article in 2020. A piece titled “4 Books all Post Grads Must Read.”
I remember the excitement. This is what I worked for. I studied for this. I was ready to go viral and make millions, just like thousands of other writers before me.
12 hours later: 2 views
1 day: 3 views
4 days: 5 views
The article also got rejected by what felt like every publication on Medium.
It hurt, but I learned a valuable lesson: You can put all your blood, sweat, and love into something but the second you hit publish, the second you upload your song to iCloud, the second you voice your idea at a meeting, it’s no longer yours.
Once your idea leaves your hand and enters the realm of the world, it’s subject to all the evils that realm can conjure: Criticism, bullying, misinterpretation, or rejection.
Count on it.
That’s why most people never get started. There’s too much emotional stress.
The thing is, that’s the risk we take to achieve anything big and important.
A marriage, a relationship, a thesis paper, a blog, we applaud these things because putting yourself out there leaves you open to getting hurt. You’re exposing yourself at the most vulnerable parts of your armor.
Of course, you don’t have to do any of those things.
Protecting yourself is easy. You can put up a wall. You can hold off the wedding till next year. You can hide your best work in a chest of drawers.
You can hope for the best. That’s always an option.
But not the best strategy.
Character Comes From The Trying
The barrier to entry is higher for some, but none of us are “supposed” to have a creative side hustle.
Take me, for example. Does the world really need another twenty-something white guy talking about side hustles and writing? Probably not.
My parents taught me that character is in the trying. You do your best and have faith in yourself and others.
Let’s look at another famous writer.
Louisa May Alcott lived during the same time as Emily Dickinson.
She was outspoken. An abolitionist and a feminist. Her family served as station masters on the Underground Railroad, where she met Frederick Douglass. She became one of the first women to register to vote in Massachusetts during a school board election, which carved a path to a larger women’s suffrage movement.
She also wrote and published. A lot.
She started with a male pen name but eventually published under her own name. One day her publisher recommend she write an American story about girls. In 1868 “Little Women” was published.
There’s an entry in her journal which reads, “Niles, partner of Roberts, asked me to write a girl’s book. I said I’d try.”
Character comes from the trying.
It comes from the deed.