The publishing industry can be a challenge for someone with artistic sensibilities. The psyche can be worn down by disappointment, bad reviews, poor sales, and rejection by agents and editors.
To be resilient in the face of such disillusion is a quality to be desired.
Contemplate this quote from Søren Kierkegaard (Danish philosopher and theologian, 1813-1855) in his book Either/Or:
“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never.”
What Kierkegaard wrote resonates with me at the deepest levels. Every day when working on a new project or reviewing a new proposal or helping an author through a new challenge, I strive to use “the eye which … sees the possible.”
Is this project commercially viable? Does this author have the indescribable magic? Is this a message that can change lives? Each question is immersed in the “possible.” That moment of decision weighs the possible against the unlikely. Once the decision is made, we hope it was the right one at that moment.
When the “possible” becomes a reality and ineffable literature takes shape, anything can happen. It is a beautiful thing.
The care you take today to craft just the right sentence, to spin the right story, to research, to plot and plan and compose, and to dream. It is in that beautiful mess that the elixir of possibility is formed.
“My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel―it is, before all, to make you see.”
― Joseph Conrad from Lord Jim
