Stubbornness and the Writer

A writer only needs a thimble of talent to get started. If you have more in your cup, congratulations, but there are many kinds of talent, remember. You may have a talent with words, or you may be a talented reader (which might be more useful). Or maybe you have the uncommon ability to park your butt in the chair for hours on end.

Take a hard look at yourself-as-writer and consider the many aspects of talent. If you want, go ahead and quit now. Don’t stop reading books, unless you want to become a brain-dead Neanderthal. Just stop writing if you don’t think you can do it. Life will go on. Books will be written and published. You may even be better off. 

But be careful with what comes next. I mean it. Yoda meant it, too: If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny…

Once you say I am a writer, then you are, and what follows is a lifetime spent trying to embody those words. I’m incredibly stubborn. It’s one of my only talents. I’ve tried to make it useful in my life as a writer, and I work to limit the ways in which being stubborn hinders other aspects of my life. I’m still working on parking my butt in the chair for hours on end.