This week’s video talks about the greatest lesson any novelist can learn.
Video Transcript:
By now, Winston Churchill’s famous quote about never giving up or giving in has become something of a cliché. But, as with most clichés, there’s a solid gem of truth at its heart, and it’s one all authors would do well to take heed of. As we come to the last of the videos in my series about what I learned while writing my fantasy novel Dreamlander, I’d like to leave you (until next week’s regularly scheduled vlog at any rate) with perhaps the most important lesson any of us can learn during this crazy writing life of ours. And that, of course, is “Never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty….”
There comes a point in just about every book-writing experience when the author is tempted to just give up and chuck the darn thing while he still can. In my experience, that point comes about every other day. I absolutely experienced my share of this with Dreamlander. I remember saying at one point, “If I can make this book work, I can do anything.” Stubbornness, even more than determination, is one of the greatest assets any writer can possess.
We have to realize that writing is always going to be an uphill battle. It doesn’t get any easier after the first book. If anything, it seems to get a little more difficult, as your own expectations and those of your readers up the pressure. We are going to be tempted to give up when the going gets tough. Believe me, there are plenty of easier ways to gain personal fulfillment. But I really don’t think any feeling of fulfillment is any better than the one writers have at the end of a hard-fought battle to bring a book to fruition.
So I encourage you to stick with it. When the book demons laugh at your paltry efforts and tell you you’ll never amount to anything, laugh right back. Stick-to-it-iveness is unconquerable. I encourage you to keep writing, keep being stubborn, and never, never, never, never give up.
Photo Credit
Thumbnail – Screen Capture From Video
Originally posted on Wordplay: Helping Writers Become Authors
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