None of It Will Save You

Some pieces don’t land where you hope they will. This one didn’t find a journal to call home, but I still believe it’s worth reading. So I’m sharing it here instead.

None of It Will Save You

Begin early. Begin while it’s still quiet enough to pretend you’re choosing this. Keep a notebook nearby, even if it’s only to feel like the kind of person who keeps notebooks. Don’t worry if the first twenty pages are blank. Worry when they’re not.

 Practice endurance before it’s noble. Fail before anyone is watching. Fail when no one cares. Fail again when someone finally does. Be gracious. Be polite. Swallow the lump. Say thank you. Say it again. Say it through your teeth.

 Invent a routine. Wake up early, even if your best ideas come at 2 a.m. Pretend structure is a form of devotion. Make tea. Don’t drink it. Stare at it like it might reveal something. Try again.

 Write something terrible on purpose. Then write something worse. Call it a warmup. Call it a purge. Call it a necessary shedding of ego, even if you secretly hope someone will stumble across it and call it raw genius. Keep going anyway. Keep writing until the sentences feel like dead skin, peeling off under your fingertips. Keep writing until you forget which one was supposed to be the joke. Keep writing until the joke sounds almost plausible.

 Start a spreadsheet. Give it a name that makes it sound like a way to stay organized instead of a graveyard. Call it Progress Tracker, or Submission Log, or The Year of Forward Motion. Color code it. Add filters. Create tabs for drafts, responses, timelines, goals. Pretend it’s data, pretend it matters. Pretend each rejection is a milestone. Pretend you're collecting them on purpose, like pressed flowers or parking tickets. Count them. Record the dates. Tell yourself there’s a pattern forming. Tell yourself it’s not just noise.

 When someone asks how it’s going, smile. Say “good!” Say “getting close.” Say “this one feels different,” even if it doesn’t. Especially if it doesn’t. Don’t mention the one you deleted without backing up. Don’t mention the one you submitted under a fake name just to see if the silence would sound different with a different name. Or if your name was the problem. Or if any change would change anything.

Build rituals. Light a candle. Blow it out. Light it again. Touch the same corner of the desk three times before opening your document. Not two, not four—three. Keep a charm nearby: a rejection letter folded so many times it’s almost soft. A lucky pen that ran out of ink six months ago. A stone you found on the day you almost quit and didn’t. Line up your notebooks in descending order of failure. Don’t touch the red one. The red one ruins things. Offer small sacrifices: a clean desk, a skipped meal, a sleep debt you’ll never repay. Pretend these things matter. Pretend they keep the work safe. Pretend they keep you safe.

Invent gods, if you have to. The Patron Saint of Almost. The God of Partial Requests. The One-Who-Replies-in-May. Light a match for the ghost of a piece that never landed. Pray to the algorithm. Whisper to the inbox. Offer tribute in wordcount. Offer tribute in blood, if it comes to that. Keep going. Keep believing. Keep pretending belief is the same thing as progress. It isn’t, but never admit that.

When inspiration fails, try momentum. When momentum fails, try caffeine. When caffeine fails, try a walk, or a new playlist, or rearranging your bookshelf like it’s an act of creative alignment. When that fails, try rage. Try muttering. Try panic. Try bargaining with a universe that has never once responded to negotiation. Then go back to the page. Not because it’s working. Just because you don’t know what else to do. Nothing like no other choice to make a thing possible.

If someone says, “you’re still doing that?” smile like it’s a compliment. Nod slowly. Say “always.” Say “it’s what I do.” Say it like a vow. Do not blink. Do not flinch. Let them understand. Or let them worry. Either is fine. Let them think you’re dedicated. Let them think you’re possessed. Let them think you’re strange. You are. Or at least you’d better be.

Keep going. Even when the words are ash. Even when the structure collapses. Even when the piece you loved turns on you mid-sentence and refuses to come back. Keep going when it’s joyless. Keep going when it’s embarrassing. Keep going when it feels like you’re writing in a language no one speaks anymore. Especially then. Especially if you’re the last one. For posterity.

Outlast them. Outlast the trend. Outlast the silence. Outlast the friend who pivoted to ceramics and suddenly got a residency. Outlast the influencer who wrote a book in two months and got a six-figure deal because her dog has a million followers. Outlast your own better judgment. Outlast the version of you that once thought this would be easier. Outlast everything that was supposed to happen by now. If you don’t, what was it for? Outlast whatever it was for.

Keep the draft open. Even when you’re not writing. Let it hum in the background like a low-grade fever. Click over to it during lunch. Scroll through it while the pasta boils. Highlight a sentence just to feel like you touched it. Add a comma. Delete it. Add it again. Proof of life.

Keep it nearby. Let it live on your desktop, pinned open, always watching. Not to work on it—just to know it’s still there. Like a half-tamed animal you don’t quite trust to stay. Don’t close it. Don’t let it rest. Let it flicker at the edge of your day, holding space for what still needs saying. Let it remind you what you haven’t done yet. Just in case.

Revisit the old drafts. The ones you swore you’d buried. Or hurled off the Tappan Zee into the Hudson. The ones with titles that gurgle and choke. Drag them up dripping. Get them on the table. Find the one sentence that still twitches and sputters. Copy it into something new. It earned a second chance. Call it salvage. Call it resurrection. Call it a mistake you’re willing to make again.

Keep sending the work out. Even the broken ones. Even the stitched-together ones made from parts of better things. Send it limping into the world anyway. Tape a cover letter to its chest like a name tag. Tell it to be brave. Tell it not to flinch. Tell it to come back with good news or not at all.

Refresh your inbox. Again. Again. Again. Check the spam folder. Check the submission portal. Check the calendar to see how long it’s been. Count the days. Count the hours. Check the inbox again. Tell yourself it’s not obsession, it’s vigilance. Tell yourself it’s not desperation, it’s discipline. Tell yourself there’s a difference even though there isn’t. Not for this.

Stay up too late. Wake up too early. Let your spine curve toward the screen like a plant reaching for a flickering blue sun. Forget how long you’ve been hunched like this. Forget why you started. Remember only that you haven’t stopped. Not yet. How can you?

Keep working. Even when it’s not progress anymore, just motion. Even when it’s not hope anymore, just habit. Even when the only reason to continue is that you already have. Keep working because stopping would mean admitting it might not matter. You might not matter. And you’re not ready for that. Not yet. Are you?

Keep going. Not because it’s noble. Not because it’s brave. Not because you think this time will be different. Keep going because there’s nothing else left to do. Because you’ve tied too much of yourself to this to walk away clean. Because you’re afraid you wouldn’t be you anymore. Because you’re more afraid you would be.

Keep building. Keep stacking the drafts, the emails, the unread responses, the half-finished notebooks, the unopened files. Let it become a monument. Let it become a burden. Let it become a life. You didn’t mean for it to go this far. But now you’re inside it. Now it’s inside you. And maybe it lasts. And maybe it doesn’t. Maybe no one ever finds the shape you meant to leave behind. Maybe it all disappears the same way it came—quietly, without notice. Maybe the work was never the legacy. Maybe the trying was. Or maybe it’s all bullshit.

Keep showing up. Even when you have nothing left to offer but the shape of your presence in a chair. Even when the sentences clatter out empty and cold. Even when your own voice sounds unfamiliar. Keep sitting there. Keep holding still. Keep giving the work a place to land, even if it never comes. Even if it never was.

It really is all bullshit.

You will lose things for this. Time. Sleep. People. You’ll forget how to answer messages. You’ll stop calling back. You’ll burn through weekends and miss the part where life was supposed to feel like one. You’ll trade hours for sentences that go nowhere. You’ll trade years for silence. You’ll give up things you didn’t even know you had until they’re already gone. And for what? Another paragraph that almost says it right.

Words. Bullshit.

Keep moving your hands. That’s all it is now. Muscle, not meaning. Reflex, not inspiration. The body goes on writing long after the mind has stopped believing in it. Type something. Erase it. Type it again. Erase that too. Stare at the blinking cursor until it starts to feel threatening. Keep going. Not because it’s good. Not because it’s true. Just because it’s yours and you have to be left with something.

That’s the secret, if there is one. You don’t finish because you believed. You finish because you ran out of reasons not to. Because the alternative is silence. Because you’re already in too deep to claw your way out clean. You finish because you’ve given too much not to leave something behind, even if it’s rubble. I mean—what would you tell your wife? What would you tell yourself? What’s it all been for?

Maybe the sentence doesn’t save you. Maybe none of them do.
But you write it anyway. You write it again.
And you keep going.
Because you have to.

Even if no one ever sees it.
Even if you hope they don’t.
Even if you can’t stand the sight of it.

And you’ll keep calling it a choice.

And none of it will save you.