Every Writer Needs To Know This

 

perseverance is everything

  

    I had originally planned to write a post on a different topic, but I decided that since I've been struggling with my writing lately this would be a better, more honest, subject to break down. Lately, I've been going through a dry spell in my writing. It's been a struggle to get my thoughts down on paper and while I have my entire novel planned out, I'm having trouble figuring out how to get from point A to point B. I love my characters and my fantasy world, but whenever I sit down at my computer it's like trying to plow through quagmire. Writing even a paragraph takes half an hour, and that's on one of the better days. 

     

    The thing is, as much as I hate having to struggle with writing, such trials are a natural occurrence in the writing world. Inspirations and hardships come hand in hand with writing, and everyone goes through a time when it is difficult to get their story down on paper. Some of the greatest authors of all time have hit the proverbial "brick wall." But if you want to be a writer, you have to be ready for the days when you're staring at a blank page. If you aren't willing to spend hours struggling until you have a breakthrough, then writing isn't for you. Because perseverance is the key to success.   

    

    Right now, there are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people who are writing books in the world. But only a handful will ever finish their written works. A lot of the people I've spoken to who are working on a novel will tell me that they enjoyed writing but that it was just "taking too long" or they simply "couldn't write anymore" so they just stopped. My heart goes out to the those people because they had the ambition and maybe even the talent to become authors, but they couldn't because they lacked perserverance. 

    A while ago now I wrote a fan letter to a favorite author of mine by the name of Melanie Dickerson. I've reviewed a few of her novels on this blog and if you've read those reviews you know how highly I esteem her. She replied to my letter with more grace than I had expected, giving me tips about the writing industry, answering my questions, and even giving me some resource references that could help me in my writing. But there was one thing in that letter that meant more to me than anything else. And it was her ending line. She said, and I quote "Just remember, never give up. Perseverance is the most important thing a writer can have." 

     Those words are the most sage advise you will ever get in this industry. It doesn't matter how much you write - a chapter, a page, a paragraph, or even just a sentence - the key to being an author is that you never stop writing. 

 

~Lydia R. Sherren