Best Advice for Writers – Don’t Give Up
July 30, 2008 by Jodee
Filed under Freelance Writing
by Becky Scott
“Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
That’s a quote from Winston Churchill, often misquoted as “Never, ever, ever, ever give up.” The meaning is close enough – don’t give up. As a writer, you must be persistent. Keep going no matter what the obstacles, the naysayers, the writer’s block. Just keep going. Write through it. Pitch those queries. Find your niche.
Being tenacious, unwilling to quit, unable to admit defeat is what keeps me going as a writer. I keep querying through the rejections and eventually someone says yes. I sit down at the computer, day after day, even when I’m not sure what I will write. I write anyway and suddenly the words are there.
My best advice to you as a fellow writer is to keep going. Even when you’re frustrated, even when you’re tired, even when everyone tells you no. Keep going. Keep writing. Remind yourself that you write because you want to, because you love it, because it pays the bills. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you keep pounding away.
Through sheer determination you’ll either find jobs or improve. Just keep writing. Through tenacity and a strong will you’ll make those pitches and eventually someone will give you a chance.
Does that mean you don’t develop your craft? No. You must learn, improve, and be worthy of getting hired. But don’t give up. You won’t get your first pitch, or your second, maybe not even your tenth or twentieth. But keep going. I’m proof – and so are many others on this site – that having faith in yourself and your abilities is what you need. Through the face of rejection, we’ve kept going. And we have the jobs, the gigs, and the work that rewards our determination.
So yes, rejection and endless queries can be frustrating. But if you keep going, keep cold calling, keep querying, keep WRITING you’ll eventually get some positive responses. Never ever, ever, ever give up.
Becky is a freelance writer and editor in San Diego, Ca. She writes about a variety of topics including business organization and productivity, automotive info for women, personal blogging and celebrity real estate gossip. Visit her online at www.beckyscorner.com
Winston Churchill has to be one of my favorite speakers. AND you did him justice as I never,never wanted to stop reading your post. You hit the nail straight on the head. Rejections just make us stronder, confirm what we really want to do, and occasionally actually turn into opportunities down the road.
Good advice. I have the proof that sticking with it pays off, but there are still many times I have to remind myself not to give up. AND, I never knew the full text of that quote, so your post taught me something new.
@Amy – Cool! I’m also proof that tenacity is what works in the end. I took a lot of time researching and learning how to do things. And then I queried and queried. There were many times I wanted to give up, but so many people told me to keep going, that it’s only a matter of time. They were right.
Nice to see full quote, all I had ever seen was the short version. I’ve landed clients after chasing for year,(I just bother them til they hire me to get me to stop). But I also chased my last “job” for 18 months, and it lasted for only 13.
@Phil – Sometimes the pursuing doesn’t work out quite as we planned! But I still think we learn a lot from continuing to try. I learn from each query. I think about what worked and didn’t. If I can get feedback on the ones that DO work, I can try to fix the other ones.
But I truly believe the law of averages is in our favor. If you keep plugging away something will give. And hopefully it’s the employer, and not you!
That’s not to say, though, that you should be annoying.
Persistent and polite, not irritating.
Great post! And right on target. Diligence more than anything can push you through the finish.
There’s another quote I heard most of my life that starts “nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”
I needed the reminded this morning that I have to keep on keeping on to get to where I want to go.
Nice quote! And nice work. It’s not easy to keep going when no one is responding to your queries or your work is met with rejection. It’s well worth it all in the end though.
Hey Deb,
And continuing to improve is just as important as pushing on. I once sent in a query that was rejected with a form letter. That same week I attended a conference that offered a session on writing query letters. Using the insight I received I resent the same article idea with my new query and the publication asked to see the article.
If you are easy to give up then writing is not the best course for you to take.
@ Kathryn:
Good for you to to repackage your query and send it in again. That’s the kind of persistence that will lead you to success!
#11, before I say what I’m about to say, I just want to note that I think this is a well-written piece and that I agree with your advice (especially for the people who come to this site, who are likely very serious about their writing).
But as someone who spends some time wading through slush pile submissions of cringe-worthy fiction from authors who clearly are not interested in bettering their craft or learning more about their craft, I have to say that maybe there are some people who really should just give up.
@#11: I too love the quote. And I have a box of rejection letters that I’m saving to wallpaper my office with when I finish repairing the hole in the wall. And no, the hole is not there from me banging my head against the wall.
After I finish the wallpapering, I’m going to frame the cover of my first published novel and hang it in the middle.
@#4 ouch! that hurts
. i would like to think every writer has a niche to fill. maybe, somehow, they are just applying for the wrong position.
Beautifully written piece with great advice. Well done, #11.
@#4 – I actually get what you are saying. I remember reading a book once where the author set the book in the 1980s and focused much of her story on the music of that decade. Now, I’m a huge music collector and if it existed in the 80s, I probably still own it.
She had one of her characters attending a prom and Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do” was the theme song. Then the story skipped forward to the present date and Crow’s song was by that point in the book supposedly 25 years old with the heroine reflecting back to her high school days. That song didn’t come out until the 90s. In the 80s, Sheryl Crow was a background singer for Michael Jackson. Anyway, I called her on it, suggesting she might want to go in and choose a more suitable song to the time period, and she was furious. I still remember what she told me, “It’s not as though that would matter to a reader.” Then she proceeded to tell me she hoped I’d never read her books again since I was so picky and that readers like me were a nuisance.
It really bothered me because authors should be able to gracefully handle positive and negative feedback. It’s the readers buying these books, so they need to keep the reader in mind. Sure they have a story to tell, but if they are ignoring their target audience, why write?
James, yes, every writer has a niche to fill with his/her work…. and a great many of those niches happen to be as doorstops.
To be clear: I am not knocking writers who have the best of intentions but the worst of experience. I am only knocking people who think that they are the next J.K. Rowling/Dan Brown and refuse to believe otherwise despite the fact that their work tells an entirely different story. Curiously, many of the people who seem to be the hugest champions of their own work are not interested in educating themselves about their competitors or about the work involved in succeeding at their craft–essentially, these people are writers who know nothing (and don’t care to learn) about what actually being a writer entails.
Ann…. exactly. The kind of writers I was speaking about are also the kind of writers who seem to respond most vehemently to constructive criticism.
#11, I hope it doesn’t seem like I am stealing your thunder with my few comments thus far. Your post just gave me a few thoughts that I wanted to mention, which is great.
@James – Wow, thanks for your compliment. I’m glad you enjoyed the piece.
@Kathryn – I’m glad this was timely for you. And way to use that query session to improve your pitch. That’s the type of persistence I’m talking about!
@Deb – Thank you. I’ve gotten many rejections and no responses. But my schedule is fairly booked now and it wouldn’t have been if I had given up.
@Jodee – Exactly!
@#4 – Ha! I was thinking about that as I wrote it. I do believe you have to keep honing your writing and figuring out why you’re not getting the right responses. Take any feedback you get and learn to apply it to make yourself better. That said, if I had to dig through a slush pile, I’d probably wish some of them would quit, too.
@#12 – Excellent! That’s the type of determination you need, especially when writing a novel. How many times have we heard of a wonderful novel that got rejected several times before someone took a chance on it. (Just make sure you’re working on your craft and learning to revise and tighten your work!)
@James – That’s a good way of putting it. I think a lot of writers just send something in without doing the research for the right and best way to do it. And I wouldn’t be surprised if many are sending their first or second draft.
@Dani – Thank you so much.
@Ann G. – As soon as you said 80s and Sheryl Crow, I went “No way!” That sort of disregard of the time you’re writing about would bug me, too. I would probably immediately put that book down, losing respect for the author. That’s such a simple piece of research and I would wonder what else she got wrong.
@#4 – Those writers that refuse to learn or improve their craft are the ones that give the rest of us a bad name. I truly think you have to be willing to learn both how to better your writing and your queries. You need to have some skill to go along with tenacity. And don’t worry about all of the comments. I’m glad you’re enjoying the discussion. I had some things to do this morning and couldn’t check in as early as I would have liked.
Thank you all for such a great discussion!
Great advice and great post #11. Undoubtly being persistent has to be a charactersitic of a good writer. Great quote too!
I’ve only recently started editing for a magazine for which I write. In this very short time I have to say that I can see #4’s point that some individuals are not meant to write. Some people feel that they can make a lot of money writing because they think it’s easy. If they only knew how much time each of us spend honing our craft they’d probably think twice about writing. As writers we know the importance of improving our writing and in challenging ourselves. This all falls under never giving up.
#4 – totally understand the need to improve oneself, especially if what you are doing isn’t being accepted anywhere
. sometimes it IS more than just bad luck…bad writing shuts many a door.
i have some great editors, they teach me a lot, AND they often point me in the right direction for improving my writing. usually it’s directing me to read certain style books or guides such as On Writing Well, The Elements of Style, The Chicago Manual of Style, etc.
so i wonder, what are some of those other things writers have do to improve their writing abilities
@Janny B – Thank you. I’ve read some pretty horrible writing, too. The people that think writing is easy and that anyone can do it and make a ton of money… well, they’re the ones that probably shouldn’t be writing.
It isn’t always hard. Sometimes you find a subject you love and the writing just flows. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for a bit of improvement. Very few people – if any – can pull off Jack Kerouac.
@James – Read a lot of GOOD writing. But don’t just read it as you would normally. Think about what you’re reading, how the author did what s/he did and why. Think about what makes it good, and why it speaks to you or draws you in. How did they develop the story?
Also? Lots of practice. Write, write, write. And then, occasionally go back to some of that writing and see if you can revise it to make it better. I love to read books by Natalie Goldberg and other authors about how to improve your craft.
@#11: ALWAYS. When I was teaching, I refused to ever give a perfect score on a piece of writing. I might give a 99%, but never that perfect 100%. I told my students that it was a reminder that no matter how good your writing is, you can ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS improve. And now for myself, I’ve congregated a pretty good group of tough critics to keep me on my toes.
@#12 – Ouch! How many of your students hated that?
It’s true though. We can always improve.
@#11: Only the Honor Students who weren’t used to anyone telling them they were less than perfect. Of course, it just made them try that much harder to see if they could break my standing rule.
@#12, that would have been like a challenge to me in school, seeing if I could write something that would get the extra 1%. Especially in high school. A little less so in college.
I started acting when I was 9, so by about the age of 11 I could have written a dissertation on rejection (actress and writer…you can imagine how happy my parents must be…). One of the things I learned quickly was that sometimes you can do your absolute best, you might even think you were the best person in the room, but you still won’t get the part. You can have all the talent in the world but if the casting directors are looking for a 5′ 5″ blonde and you’re a 5′2″ redhead, you’re just not going to get the part. Or maybe you think you did well, but the director just has a different interpretation of the part. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t matter how hard you try or how professionally you execute your work, you’re just not going to get the part.
So you have to learn not to be afraid of the possibility of rejection, and to not take it personally. No one is trying to reject you, after all. One of the most difficult things to get yourself to believe when you walk into a room to audition is that the casting directors want you to succeed, that they are dying for you to be “the one.” In that moment of fear before beginning an audition, many actors feel like the casting people are just there to ignore them or make fun of them or watch them fall like a figure skater blowing up at the Olympics. It’s not true, though; it’s not about whether they like you or not, whether they want to be your friend or exclude you from the cool group; it’s about what you’re doing and how you fit what they want. #4, I’m sure when you look in the slush pile, you’re absolutely hoping more than anything in the world that you’re going to find something brilliant. Editors and casting directors aren’t sitting around playing some game of “let’s hurt the sensitive artists’ feelings!” if for no other reason than that doesn’t result in profits.
When I don’t get a part that I auditioned for, I always ask myself if it was because of something that was out of my control, as in I wasn’t right for it, or whether it was something I could have controlled. Did I really do my best? Was I really prepared? Should I have been trying for that particular role at all? Did I choose the wrong audition material? Did I wear something that didn’t show me off to the best advantage? Was I focused enough? It’s the same in writing, I’m sure–sometimes you think what you’ve submitted is so great and so perfect that no one could ever possibly reject it, and maybe you’re right. Maybe the editors liked it but have something similar coming up and can’t use it or another reason like that. Or maybe, if you really stop and analyze it, it wasn’t as perfect as you thought.
Anyway, I guess what I’m saying (in an excessively long-winded way) is the best way to handle rejection is just to worry about what you can control, don’t worry about what you can’t, and don’t take it personally.
P.S. I had an acting teacher in college who said on the first day of class that he didn’t give As because he hadn’t ever seen anyone do perfect work. When I got an A- from him, it was one of the best days of my college career.
***OMG, I didn’t mean to write something so long! Apologies! This is what happens when no one gives me a word count!!***
@skippy – that was great! It perfectly embodies the serenity prayer about accepting the things you can’t change, changing the things you can, and knowing the DIFFERENCE. Good illustration of that. We really do have to learn to have a thick skin, but also understand what pieces we can control.