Releasing Attachment to Results. Yeah, Right. Me, Neither.

One of the biggest issues I face as a writer is doing the work and then, as the Bhagavad Gita advises, releasing my attachment to results. As a philosophy, it makes a boatload of sense. If I could manage this, I could simply concentrate on doing the work and quit angsting over all the stuff that's out of my control, such as:

1. blowing the socks off some editor or other (or better yet, every single one of them. In the known world!)
2. making everyone at the publishing house so excited they not only make an offer, but get behind the book in a huge way
3. notching up sales, awards, royalties, etc.
4. meeting and exceeding my readers' expectations
5. earning the affection of every person on the planet (as if any author ever born has done that!)

The problem is, to successfully write a novel, you really, really have to care. You have to live it, breathe it, cry and bleed it. You have to plot and scheme and parse and anguish over every character, each chapter, every single sentence. And then you're supposed to suddenly cut the cord, turn your back on your progeny, and not even turn your head to check on its fate?

For most of us, it doesn't work that way. If we're pros, we go on to work on other projects to distract us. (Putting all your eggs is one basket is a recipe for disaster, and a having a shiny new story going really is the best inoculation against heartbreak.) If we're parents, we might think about the first time we handed our child over to daycare, kindergarten--or handed him the car keys. We were scared as hell, and a lot of us still pray each time we hear sirens. But we forced ourselves to let go. To let that child out into the world (eventually) to do his thing.

It doesn't make it easy. It doesn't make it hurt less. But if you want to be a pro (or raise a functional adult rather than a permanent basement dweller, come to think of it) you have to suck it up and do it nonetheless. And sometimes you have to willingly turn a blind eye to the stumbles along the way.

But that never, ever means that you don't care down to your bones.