Perseverance
CRG Consulting, one of our customers, gifted me a calendar. Not your usual muscle cars or Canadian scenes (beautiful though they are) but a calendar of positive thoughts. I opened it at random to July, which spookily enough was the very page I needed to read:
‘I’m convinced
that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs
from the non-successful ones is
pure perseverance.’
STEVE JOBS
Sourcing something, even an idea, that I need to perform a required task is an intuitive (woo-woo) thing that drives my wife crazy. One day you’ll probably hear of the candle snuffer, but that’s a story for another blog.
Today’s blog, however, is about writing. How many great literary classics that could change lives, or even entire generations, lie on a shelf or in the confines of a computer file somewhere?
Forgotten…
…because the writer never believed in themselves. One or two rejections were enough and they simply gave up.
Sadly, I guess we’ll never know.
Early every morning, steaming coffee in hand, caffeine dancing its merry way around my system as I await its full effect so I can get writing, I sit before a poster entitled, oddly enough, Perseverance. A man sitting before a piano, pages of discarded drafts scattered by his feet, in a room all alone.
“Great works are performed not by strength,
but by perseverance.”
Samuel Johnson.
If it weren’t for perseverance Stephen King’s "Carrie" would not have seen the light of day, dumped into the trash along with the words, "I give up. I'm going to stick to being a teacher."
Although the perseverance in question was not his but his wife’s. "You tell me you're a writer. Dust off that blown, crumpled and withered ego and put it out there. AGAIN."
The very next publisher accepted the book, otherwise only the children of some Eastern American state would know him at all, and as only a stuffy English teacher to boot.
War and Peace, the great literary classic by Leo Tolstoy, was rejected by over a hundred publishers.
Dr. Suess of Cat in the Hat fame did give up. Fortunately he left his rough draft to be found by a fellow during a house party, who just happened to work at a publishing house. The rest is simply Green Eggs and Ham.
A mother frequents a warm, dry café somewhere in England, nursing one cup of lukewarm coffee. Seven years after graduating from university, her marriage failed, jobless with a dependent child, suffering clinical depression and contemplating suicide she signed up for welfare assistance to try to make ends meet. But despite all this she knew in her heart she was a writer. How easy it would have been to give up and then the world would never have met Harry Potter.
I went through 398 rejections before my first novel got accepted. That’s not giving up (although it is a very humbling experience.)
Joanne Rowling’s soul, like mine and yours, keeps crying out; you’re a writer. You can’t look yourself in a mirror knowing you’ve given up.
For that blank page beckons you, oh so seductively, to keep writing.
And the pen never sleeps.
Sincerely
Frank Talaber
Frank Talaber’s Writing Style? He usually responds with: Mix Dan Millman (Way of The Peaceful Warrior) with Charles De Lint (Moonheart) and throw in a mad scattering of Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get The Blues).
PS: He’s better looking than Stephen King (Carrie, The Stand, It, The Shining) and his romantic stuff will have you gasping quicker than Robert James Waller (Bridges Of Madison County).
Or as is often said: You don’t have to be mad to be a writer, but it sure helps.
Also look for my next novel: The Joining, coming out in early 2018.
Carol Ainsworth goes undercover to the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC. Where two mafia clans are meeting for a supposed wedding. Only they are waking up all the ghosts in Victoria, and believe me, there's a lot of ghosts in Victoria. You'll also meet hunky Jake Holden and Tony Belleti. Both have the hots for Carol. You'll also meet psychic, Agnes Van Lunt, elderly lady madder than a raccoon on a dog sled.
