Every Day Is Another Audition

There’s an old expression in journalism that says you’re only as good as your last story.

It’s a sobering thought, especially after you’ve spent months reporting a major investigation or weeks polishing a long-form feature you’re particularly proud of. The story appears in print, friends call to congratulate you, some readers write complimentary emails, and others write to complain. For a day or two, it feels as though you’ve accomplished something substantial.

Then it’s on to the next mountain waiting to be climbed.

I’ve come to realize over time that journalism is hardly unique in that regard.

A pilot doesn’t become permanently proficient because he greased the landing last Tuesday. Every takeoff demands discipline. Every instrument approach requires concentration. The airplane doesn’t care how many hours are in your logbook or how many compliments you’ve received on previous flights. It responds only to what you do at the controls today.

The same is true in Hollywood. An actor may win an Oscar, but he still has to convince a producer he’s right for the next role. A screenwriter can sell a blockbuster script, then spend months wondering whether another one will ever sell. Novelists don’t get to coast because their last book received favorable reviews. Every new manuscript begins with the same blinking cursor and the same unsettling question:

One of the lessons I impress upon my writing students is that work begets work. You never know who’s reading what you’ve written, how they may be impressed by your skills, and how that might well influence the trajectory of your career.

In synopsis, and to illustrate the point, my own career has gone something like this:

In college, I wrote a story for a reporting class about a broken malfunctioning water fountain at a city park that wouldn’t turn off, and how it was wasting hundreds of gallons of water a day. The story resulted in a job at the student daily newspaper which, after interim reporting posts in Colorado Springs and Denver, lead me to a Pulitzer Prize-winning career at the Los Angeles Times, which led to a 10-year-stint as a screenwriter in Hollywood, which lead me to working with the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency, which lead me to publishing mystery novels, which led me to teaching at my alma mater, Colorado State University, and, these days, at the Extension School at Harvard.

To repeat: work begets work.

That’s why there is no such thing as a throwaway assignment. There are no small stories. No insignificant essays. Every piece of work you release into the world is introducing you to people you’ll likely never meet, but who could change the course of your career. You must give it your all, every time, if you hope to make those introductions work to your benefit.

My parents deserve either the credit—or perhaps the blame—for instilling in me a lifelong desire to excel. They belonged to a generation that believed praising children risked making them complacent. Encouragement, in their view, came not from celebrating what you’d accomplished, but from challenging you to do even better. The bar was always being raised. No matter how well I’d done, there was another goal to reach, another standard to meet, another expectation to fulfill. Sometimes those expectations were perfectly reasonable. Sometimes they weren’t. But the lesson was unmistakable: yesterday’s success was never an excuse to stop striving today.

One memory serves to illustrate the point.

On the swim team in high school, my best event was the 200-yard freestyle. During a meet my senior year, I found myself racing a Junior All-American. He beat me handily, as everyone expected. What nobody expected—including me—was that I would swim the race of my life.

I knocked several seconds off my personal best time. I climbed out of the pool exhausted but exhilarated. I couldn’t wait to call my father.

“Why didn’t you beat him?” was his response.

Not, “That’s terrific.”

Not, “I’m proud of you.”

Just, “Why didn’t you beat him?”

Looking back, I don’t believe my dad intended to be harsh. In his mind, he was pushing me to aim higher. But somewhere along the way, I also absorbed a different lesson: whatever I’d accomplished, there was always another race waiting.

Another news story.

Another book.

Another class to teach.

Another opportunity to prove myself.

For years, I chased approval. From my parents. From my editors. From readers. Age has changed a lot of that. These days, I’m trying to impress mostly myself. But I would be the first to admit I’m not an easy audience to satisfy.

What hasn’t changed is the work. It never becomes appreciably easier.

When I was younger, I assumed experience would eventually eliminate much of the uncertainty. I imagined there would come a point where I’d written enough newspaper stories, enough screenplays, enough novels, and taught enough classes that I’d sit down at the keyboard knowing exactly what I was doing.

I’m still waiting for that to happen.

Every new project still begins the same way: with a blank page and a nagging suspicion that perhaps this time I really do need to find another job. I used to joke that maybe I’d quit writing and apply for work at Sears. Alas, Sears these days is all but out of business.

Fortunately, experience has taught me something more valuable than confidence. It has taught me that uncertainty isn’t evidence of failure. It’s simply part of the creative process. Even after all these years, I still begin every new project wondering whether I can pull it off.

I hope that feeling never goes away. The day writing stops challenging me is probably the day I should stop writing.

The blank page doesn’t know—or care—what you’ve published before. Awards, accolades, and previous successes may open doors and create opportunities you never imagined, but they don’t write today’s story. Every new project asks the same question:

Can you still do this?

Perhaps that’s why I’ve come to appreciate the old newsroom expression more than I did when I was young:

You’re only as good as your last story.

When I first heard that, it sounded like pressure. Now it sounds like permission. Permission to begin again. Permission to keep learning. Permission to accept that no matter how much experience we accumulate, the work itself will continue asking difficult things of us.

And that’s exactly as it should be. Because every article, every novel, every lecture, every screenplay, every blog post is making introductions and applying for that next opportunity.

Work really does beget work.

You never know who’s reading.

You never know where a single piece of writing might lead.

But one thing you can count on is this:

If you truly are a writer, tomorrow you’ll sit down and audition all over again.