To succeed at writing, you need patience and perseverance. As James Baldwin said:
If you don’t dig in to pursue your long-term writing goal, then your manuscript will become another dust gatherer.
Angela Duckworth is a psychologist, academic and popular science author who’s studied grit—which she defines as “passion and perseverance for long-term goals.“
By writing a book, you’re tackling a challenge that many people talk
about but never get around to doing.
Some of them buy the equipment and do the training—books on writing
and attending courses—but you’re actually climbing the mountain of
creating a story. There are a thousand ways to reach the peak, and
nothing to prevent you backtracking to try a different route. To get
to the top, you’ll need determination and self-belief to the point of
arrogance; the worst thing you can do is beat yourself up. If you do
that, you’ll stop climbing, crawl into a crevasse and freeze to
death.
Our greatest weakness is in giving up. The most certain way to
succeed is always try one more time.
It could be that no one much will care that you make a successful
ascent—that’s what literary agents are for, to bring you down to
earth—but, you’ll know you did it and that’s what’s crucial. You’ll
feel better for it:
“We
write to heighten our own awareness of life. We write to lure and
enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write
to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. We write,
like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves
that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to
reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak with others, to
record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world
when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely…When I don’t
write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in prison. I feel I
lose my fire and my colour. It should be a necessity, as the sea
needs to heave, and I call it breathing.”
