The Gift of Perseverance

A couple of weeks ago I signed with a great literary agency for my latest novel, An Ordinary Love. My other novel As Waters Gone By is supposed to be released sometime in September 2013 … and suffice it to say, I’m thrilled. It’s been a long road. One, I think I’ve learned a lot from.

We live in an age of immediacy – everything is supposed to happen right now. When the internet slows but a moment, we reset it, frustrated we have to wait. We are on the go all the time, afraid to take moments to pause, reflect, afraid that we aren’t producing something. By nature, I’m impatient. I love quick results.

However, most of the truly good things in this life come from learning to wait, from cultivating patience. For example, it doesn’t matter how many people you have helping you in your pregnancy – it’s still going to take nine months for that baby to reach its full gestation period and when babies are born early, it can be devastating.

When I’m writing a first draft of a novel, I work on it every day at the same time. I have a word count, and I have a minimum time period in front of the computer. I try to have at least a vague idea where I’m going, but inevitably, no matter what happens, I get stuck – usually right in the middle. I have a choice to make when I’m bogged down and don’t know where I’m going: quit and move onto the next book I have in the back of my mind, or push through to the end. The first two novels I tried to write, I quit half-way. I didn’t like where they were going and decided to end the project. Project terminated. The latter option, to push through the story until I get to type those wonderful words … The End … takes another set of skills. You see, It takes courage to fail. And for my first two novels I was too afraid of failure to actually finish, so I hung out in Never Neverland – not succeeding, but not failing either, going nowhere.

It was my third attempt at a novel, Endora, a children’s fantasy, where I moved over the hump and learned to finish a manuscript, send it out, query it till the cows come home, get it professionally edited, learn heaps about the craft, and also learn the gift of letting go. I remember, I was half-way through that book, and I hit the same wall. I wanted to quit, I had another idea brewing that I thought might be better, and was tempted to throw Endora away … I chose to push through that one and I learned that I have what it takes to finish a novel. Then, I learned that I have what it takes to see it get rejected over and over again and change things, tweak them, edit and revise. And then I learned that I have what it takes to write another book and to let Endora go … because it wasn’t a book that should be published. It wasn’t good enough. And that’s okay.

My fourth attempt at a novel was different. I wrote the first draft of Waters because I had something to say, because I had a story brewing and I knew it was unique. And during all the rejections, the edits, the revisions, the very mean comments said to me about it, I knew it was different and worth editing, revising, putting the time into. I am proud of my little book now. And five years later, I’m still editing the damn thing! Now, I’m ready to be finished. 

In Chile, a couple of months ago I wanted to go home. Circumstances were harder than I had anticipated, expectations for certain relationships went unmet, and on many occasions I locked myself in the bathroom and cried, wondering what happened to my life. Amid all the lonely days, the confusion, the darkness, I recognized myself in my own writing process. I was in the middle of the book, wondering if it would be better to pack it up and start something new. A few people even counseled us that perhaps we weren’t supposed to be here and we’d made a mistake. But, I’ve learned something from writing all those pages … I know how to keep going, right through the middle of all the muck and confusion into the heart of the story, to find a way through.

And the way through is simple. You keep going. You keep putting one foot in front of the other. You keep typing, you keep getting up and taking your kids to school, you dare to hope again even in the face is disappointments and grief. Hope Springs eternal, you see…. If you learn to push through the muck of an unwritten story and trudge through profound insecurities and vulnerability you will learn the art and craft of patience. Perseverance.

Something great is found, something wonderful is gleaned, is gained from learning to press into the wind rather than away from it. It builds resistance, an internal strength that is much needed in a culture of superficiality and immediate results.

I’d love to hear your personal stories of perseverance and persistence.

Much Love,

Tina