A few years ago, I went to hear author and now presidential candidate Marianne Williamson speak. She was describing a conference she held on race relations in Los Angeles. She said that tension was rising in the room when a white man stood up and angrily addressed an African-American woman.
“We’ve heard about all of this injustice again and again!” he yelled. “This is not helping anything. Why can’t we move on?”
I don’t usually include photos in my weekly blogs, but this you just have to see to believe—at my house, we have been living in a sock crisis for months. How does this relate to your writing? The excuses you make about why you can’t find the time, or why your stories don’t actually matter, or how it’s fine to let your project limp along as a scrambled, disorganized mess, those have to stop.
Bring to mind someone you know who seems to have it all. You know the kind—the Eternal Optimist, the friend with the Midas Touch, the Big Man on Campus.
Someone like Kim, who was the lead singer at the church I attended. She was talented and vivacious, with a powerhouse voice and energy that lit up the stage. Week after week she performed with a smile on her face while I slouched half-asleep in the pew wondering how she did it.
Since the publication of my memoir last fall, I’ve been reunited with my first love—fiction—and it feels so…..good. Mostly.
It also feels daunting and overwhelming and fills me with uncertainty and doubt.
But I believe ideas have their own timeline, and that, when we pay attention, we see tiny sprouts of magic when the time comes to begin the novel, or return to the memoir, or noodle over a poem.
This week the word perseverance has been scratching at me, wanting to be written about. It’s pestered me with all the doggedness you would expect from it. So here I am, struggling to come up with an opening story to illustrate what it means to persevere and why it interests me.
I don’t have a story. But that in itself is perfect. Because the essence of perseverance isn’t in the moment of triumph, realization, or reward. It’s not about the outcome. It is, by definition, the steady persistence in a course of action—and here’s the best part—in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.
👉 Enjoy dedicated writing space just steps from Lake Michigan
👉 Benefit from one-on-one developmental editing sessions
