I went to a horse show this past weekend. My mare and I had two excellent schooling (practice) sessions the week before the show and then the day of the show we - not just her and not just me, but both of us, individually and together - were awful. I won't go into details; that's sometimes just the way it happens. We still won two of our classes and placed second in the others, which is also sometimes just the way it happens.
My outlook toward showing has nothing to do with winning or how my horse and I placed in the class. I judge how we did according to our own current level of performance and not compared to any other competitors or to what the judge thought.
In spite of being awarded the Reserve Champion ribbon for our class division, I was very disappointed. For me it is much more disheartening to perform badly and win than to perform well and lose. I always feel better knowing we did our best, even if we don't get any ribbons or don't perform nearly as well as those we competed against.
Frequently, my horse and I do very well. Sometimes the judge agrees and we get ribbons, sometimes not. But I'm always pleased when I know we did well, whatever the judge's opinion. I feel this is a very practical and positive way to look at riding progress, so I try to apply this attitude to writing.
It's easy to do this if you don't submit your work. You write something great, you know/recognize that it's great, your writing group/mentors believe it's great. Then when a/the/any publication you submit it to says, "This is great! But we don't want it.", you begin to doubt the greatness.
This is where we need to remember that our writing can be great, but still be outclassed or not be what the editor wants to see, or even just be something the editor doesn't like for some reason. Editors, like show judges, are human and their opinions are subjective.
No matter what readers may think or how it compares to what other writers produce, we should know when our work is as good as we can write. Likewise, we should know when our writing is not as good as we are capable of writing (as I knew both my and my horse's showing over the weekend was way under par). And as always- even if we are producing our best work - we should strive to improve.
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good reasoning.
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