A Book to Help Writers Persevere

by Lynn Blackburn @LynnHBlackburn

I recently read a fascinating book, Grit - The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Dr. Angela Duckworth has studied successful students, athletes, soldiers, and even spelling bee champions in an effort to determine why some people succeed and others, well, don’t.

As you might guess from the title, the difference is grit. Grit is that intangible combination of passion and perseverance that ultimately trumps talent (your natural ability) and even skill (ability developed over time with practice). It’s the idea that someone less talented and less skillful could someday be on par, or even eclipse the achievements of their more innately talented and skilled peers because they were willing to put the effort into getting better.

If, like me, you’ve ever read a book that made you want to weep in hopeless agony because you know in the core of your being that you don’t have the talent or skill to ever compete with that author, then maybe this will be as interesting to you as it was to me.

Grit is close to 300 pages of science and anecdotes, so there’s no way I can cover all of it in a blog post, but here’s a brief summary.

It turns out that more than talent or skill, more than age, education level, or financial status, your “grit factor” may be the biggest predictor of whether or not you achieve your writing goals—whatever those happen to be. And here’s what’s really interesting . . . If you don’t think you’re a particularly gritty person, you can grow your grit.

How? She goes into great deal about these four areas:

Interest: It helps to enjoy what you’re doing. This is where the concept of “If you can be something other than a writer, you should be” comes in. It’s okay if writing is a hobby—something you enjoy dabbling in. But if you want to make a career of it, the parts of writing you enjoy need to outweigh the parts that make you want to run screaming from your office (or your local coffee shop).

Practice: She has some fascinating information on what she calls “deliberate practice.” She’s not talking about spending a few minutes here and there glancing through a book on the craft or reading a writing blog. Deliberate practice is concentrated effort on improving skill. For a writer this means learning what your writing weaknesses are and then intentionally working on them. Not just once, but over and over again until that weakness is a strength. And then finding another weakness and repeating the process.

Purpose: She argues that few people can maintain long-term passion for an endeavor unless they believe that what they are doing matters. If you want to develop your writing grit, spend some time thinking about your readers. Ponder what God is doing with your writing and how your words matter.

Hope: Hope permeates all the stages of growing your grit. Hope is what keeps you submitting when the rejection letters come. Hope is what brings you back to your laptop when your critique group didn’t like your story, or when the negative reviews knock the wind out of you.

What I found most interesting about this list is that none of them are fixed. None of them are available to you in predetermined portions. If you really want to, you can grow all of them.

If you feel like your writing is not going where you want it to go, let me offer a few suggestions based on what I learned in this book.

1. Ask yourself if this is really what you want. It’s okay if the answer is no. Maybe you thought writing was the direction you were headed, but now you’ve discovered a love of photography. Or maybe you wrote a few articles, but now you find yourself drawn to speaking more than writing. Maybe those things are where you main focus should be. It doesn’t mean you aren’t gritty if you realize something you enjoy just isn’t enough to keep you engaged for several decades.

2. Practice. Really practice. If you’ve been getting feedback and you keep hearing the same things, it’s time to get serious about fixing that problem. And be prepared that it takes time—lots of time—spent in deliberate practice to get better.

3. Remember your purpose. I have days where I don’t want to write. I really don’t. I want to do something else—like watch Netflix with a tub of popcorn. But guess what? Watching Netflix, as delightful as that can be, is not what God has called me to. And while it may be enjoyable in the moment, it will never be as fulfilling to me as the work God has created me to do.

4. Hope. In the chapter on hope, Duckworth says the hope required isn’t the kind of hope that thinks tomorrow will be better than today because that kind of hope “comes without the burden of responsibility.” But a gritty hope doesn’t “have a feeling tomorrow will be better” but instead “resolves to make tomorrow better.” This kind of hope “has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.”

So what do you think? Have you seen this in your own writing life? Does it encourage you to know that your success depends less on your innate talent and more on your willingness to work hard and not quit?

Let’s talk about it in the comments.

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Lynn Huggins Blackburn believes in the power of stories, especially those that remind us that true love exists, a gift from the Truest Love. She’s passionate about CrossFit, coffee, and chocolate (don’t make her choose) and experimenting with recipes that feed both body and soul. She lives in South Carolina with her true love, Brian, and their three children. Her first book, Covert Justice, won the 2016 Selah Award for Mystery and Suspense and the 2016 Carol Award for Short Novel. Her second book, Hidden Legacy, releases June 2017. You can follow her real life happily ever after on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and at lynnhugginsblackburn.com.