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My literary agent is sending my most recent book out to publishers, and I am waiting to hear whether or not I am a worthwhile human being.

This isn’t how my agent described the submission process to me. What she actually said was that she would send the proposal out to editors she thought might respond to the material. I supplied the part about the response being a verdict of my overall worth in the world.

Because here’s how I feel: If I get a book deal, I am certain I will be able to relax, that my constant striving will settle into a wholesome artistic motivation. I will know that the years I spent working on the book will have been worthwhile. I will stop wondering whether I should have spent those years doing something else. Most importantly, I will finally, finally be satisfied.

I learned a term recently on my podcast Fifty Words For Snow, where my co-host Emily John Garcés and I explore words without easy English equivalents. The term is objet petit a.

Irish philosopher Peter Rollins introduced us to objet petit a, a term from the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, often translated as the “object-cause of desire.” It’s the thing that keeps us wanting: the elusive something that........

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