Running for Your Life: More Managing Disappointment

Perhaps, as a writer, there can be no better example of an author efficiently managing disappointment than Karl Ove Knausgaard, who, after his six-part, 3,600-page book called “My Struggle,” or “Min Kamp” in his native Norwegian (yes way, “Mein Kampf” in German) became a national phenomenon, and now an international one, http://nyr.kr/MZQA2l sealed with the requisite James Wood rave in the New Yorker, tells the New York Times http://nyti.ms/LAyNui that he has no idea whether he will ever write again, and has used his royalties to move to the Swedish countryside and found a small publishing house.

Me, I make less grandiose efforts to manage disappointment. And not like a work colleague of mine, who has written a novel, screenplays and stories, all unpublished, and says that he is totally fine with the idea that those works will remain in a drawer and be published posthumously, if at all.

I write every day. And, yeah, it’s been awhile since I sent out my last novel. But I remain convinced that it will be published.

Will I be disappointed if it never sees the light of day? You betcha. But that prospect won’t keep me up at night. I’ve got too much writing to do, that I have to get done.

And none of it goes out post-humorously.

Next: Running for Your Life: Trampoline Gold