Gold Stars Revisited

    As we bid a fond sabbatical to TA Jeanne Marie, we are taking another look at our favorite JM posts. Mine is from June  2011, "Gold Stars."  In this one, JM discusses the pros and cons of rewards for summer reading programs. Shouldn't the act of reading be reward in itself?  This made m think of the larger issue, "Who gives gold stars to writers?"

    There are plenty of rewards out there for published authors.   Not just gold stars, but fancy embossed stickers on book jackets proclaiming this book was the among the best of whatever genre that particular year.  Some are more prestigious than others but still those stickers, and medals and plexiglass trophies are nice to have . They are a tangible "atta-girl" in a field that doesn't provide a lot of them.  

    But there are a lot of books, and comparatively few awards. Even fewer awards mean anything in the way of prestige or, let's face it, book sales. That is if you have first been rewarded by being  published. Some of us, (most of us?) toil year after year, page after page, with nothing more than a bunch of rejection letter/emails to show for our efforts. In the ultimate downer, many publishers, in the interest of saving time and paper, don't even send out rejections any more. If you don't hear anything after a certain amount of time,"we (the publisher) aren't interested." Ouch. We, (the writer) no longer have the satisfaction of weeping and wailing and torching a rejection letter in the fireplace. (I can't be the only one who has done this.)

    Sometimes writing becomes just another thankless task, like housework or driving carpool.  Ralph Waldo Emerson said  "A thing done well is it's own reward." Mr. Emerson never vacuumed or was trapped in a minivan of eye rolling seventh graders, to whom your mere presence was a necessary embarrassment , since thirteen-year-olds don't have drivers' licenses.  There are days when I am either staring at a blank computer screen or playing Candy Crunch Saga. Either way, I am accomplishing the same thing. Nothing. And wondering why I chose to be a writer.

   Even being a published writer doesn't necessarily provide satisfaction. Soon you learn that royalty statements often arrive without royalty checks....because your books hasn't earned enough.   Money isn't everything, but it's hard to tell yourself that you spent years of your life writing something that is earning you only the advance money and not a nickel more. For most of this, that advance can be counted in five figures. I could make more moolah at my local fast food establishment.

   So why do we keep doing this? Where are the gold stars? For me,  they aren't movie options, or Newbery awards or a book going into a 55th printing because it is on the required reading list in all fifty states.

   I have to have hunt for those gold stars. Sorry Mr. Emerson, but a job done well is not it's own reward for me, because I never feel that I have done a job well. I am a terrible judge of my own work, by which I mean, I think nearly everything I write is terrible. 

   Every now and then, I do find those sparkly rewards. A student saying, "I loved your book."  A critique group member saying "Wow, I never would have thought of writing  this story from that point of view." External rewards.

   My most consistent gold star is this: writing is a compulsion. If I never sold another story, I would still write.  Letters, eulogies (I am the official family eulogy writer), this blog. Although a Newbery award would be great (so would a movie option) my real gold star is the knowledge that somewhere, sometime, my writing has connected with someone. Maybe someone like you.

Posted by Mary Ann Rodman

Gold Stars

My daughter and I recently participated in a 5K fundraiser at her school.  I was worried that I might need a cattle prod to coax her to the finish line, so I was very proud of her for achieving consistent forward motion at a reasonable pace.  At the finish line, Kate's best friend (who, at barely 6, ran every step of the race!) netted a ribbon, a medal, and a trophy.  Kate, meanwhile, had nothing but the pride of accomplishment.  This was not nearly enough, I discovered, as she burst into pitiful tears.  When I told her she'd done a good job, she sobbed, "No, I didn't!  If I didn't get anything, I didn't do a good job!"

Many parents I know bemoan the everyone-gets-a-trophy school of childrearing that seems so prevalent these days.  I hate it, too.  But the truth is -- I always liked my gold stars and worked hard to earn them.  I do get it.

Carmela's marvelous post on writing buddies also made mention of gold stars.  As writers, most of us must work hard at devising self-motivation strategies to get through the long and lonely slogging of getting and revising and re-revising a draft.  As teachers, we also expend endless energy on developing strategies to motivate our students to be interested, engaged, and -- dare we hope? -- enthusiastic.  My college-age students STILL find an occasional chocolate reward to be excellent incentive.

To this end, our local library has a summer reading incentive program, and this is the first year my daughter has been old enough to participate.   Read a certain number of minutes, visit the library enough times, and you get a prize, or two, or three.  I have to confess to mixed feelings about this.  Shouldn't we want to read for the sheer pleasure of the experience?  On the other hand... perhaps encouraging reading will result in a love that grows irrespective of the prize but might never have developed without it. 

How do you teachers feel about these types of rewards?  Do they seem to work over the long term? 
Ironically, I find that the reward I most love to give myself at the end of a long workday (besides a nice, tall margarita) is some time in bed with a good book.  Off to pour myself a margarita right now...  And tonight I am reading Uma Krishnaswami's latest after our fab library trip today -- it is so, so good!