Going All-In

Looks just like me, don't you think? :)

In fifth grade, our class planned to perform Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I was desperate to play Ariel (no, this character is not a mermaid). Auditions began and I didn’t even bother with auditioning for the other characters. Miranda? Puh. I had to be Ariel.

The next day, without even auditioning the part I wanted, the main female characters were cast. I was devastated. I remember going into one of the big empty rooms at the school (why was it empty and why was I allowed access? I don’t remember, but don’t bother me with details) and mourning my loss. I had already started memorizing “my” lines. And I began to perform them, there in that empty room.

Okay, brief interruption for an insertion of reality (or maybe it’s just my memory of reality?). The room was not entirely empty. In it was one of the teachers who had helped cast the play. But where she was sitting, I could pretend that she wasn’t there. Knowing she was there but pretending she wasn’t was part of my devious plot. Here’s what I did next…

I began to perform those lines with all of my soul in them. I flew around them room, calling down tempests and flaming imaginary ships. I was confident, I was strong, I put emotion into that character that I hardly knew existed. In my fifth-grade mind, I was brilliant. Valerie, the girl who was assigned to play Ariel, was gone from school that day, so she hadn’t heard that she’d been cast yet. I think I secretly hoped I could convince the teacher to change the casting once she saw how amazing I was.

And you know what? It worked. I got the part of Ariel.

And you know what? I never performed that part as well as I had that first day, when I pretended that no one was watching. Every rehearsal, every performance was a shadow of that first one.

Let’s fast forward now, shall we? To, say, the year 2012. If you haven’t heard it yet, I would very much like to be a published author some day. (If you haven’t heard it, what dark cave have you been hanging out in?) To that end, one must occasionally write and submit works for publication. So I have been writing and working and trying not to throw the computer out the window occasionally. In May I was working on a story that I wanted to submit a serious (dare I say “literary”?) piece to a contest due at the end of the month.

I finished a first draft of my story and stared at it with dread. I knew it needed an outside perspective, but I didn’t want to show it to anyone. I mean, really really didn’t want to show it to anyone. I finally let Brice read it, and I cringed the entire time. Seriously, people, I hid my head under my pillow. I was sure it was completely hideous.*

Okay, Jeanna, what’s your point? My point is this: The best parts of that story, the parts that felt the most right to me—those were the parts where I was standing in a room dancing, pretending that no one was there. Those were the parts when I went all-in, leaving nothing of myself out. And they were few, but they were good. (I think.)

There is something frightening, I think, about going all-in. Maybe this is just me, but I think it is terrifying to imagine doing something in which you have laid your soul bare and now someone else may critique it and judge it unworthy. What if you fail? What if you get laughed at? What if your whole self just isn’t good enough?

I don’t have answers for any of those questions, but I have begun to notice that sometimes in writing (and also, I think, in life) you will be found wanting if you don’t go all-in. Or maybe your work will be good enough, but it won’t be as good as it should have been. There are times and places where you can’t have your foot in the door, ready to step out at any time.** You have to be all-in. I am reminded of a scripture that has called to me many times: “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. … But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition [destruction/ruin]” (Hebrews 10:35, 39). Don’t draw back. Go all-in.

Notice me not throwing the
computer out the window.

So here I am, working on my novel, trying to be confident and pretend that no one else is in the room. Here I am, trying desperately to go all-in, both in my book and (quite frankly) in my parenting. (Okay, and if we’re being really honest, I’m only trying desperately some of the time.) And still, quite frequently, failing miserably. But at least I’m working on it.

How about you?

*In case you’re wondering, only parts of it were hideous. I think. And anyway, in the end, I submitted it to the contest because at the very least I need the practice of finishing something and trying to get it out there. I also submitted to another contest this month. But don’t ask me about the results for either of them any time soon. I won’t know for up to three months. Three. Months. This is a very special brand of torture.

**One of those places is actually at your door, unless you’re one of those creepy Fiery things from Labyrinth and can detach your foot and leave it outside your door… but I digress.