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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Perseverance (Thursday's Three)

I was reading an article a few weeks back about how even writers who "come out of nowhere" don't really come out of nowhere.  Dig into the back stories of any successful writer and one quickly finds that even if they burst onto the scene with an early published effort, they worked and worked (and worked and worked) for a long time prior to their emergence.  Across the board you see the same kind of long years of struggle.  Some writers start submitting early, and could wallpaper a house with their rejection letters.  Others struggle quietly for years before they put themselves out there.  But whether a trickle of success slowly becomes a flow (I hesitate to use the word "flood" as it applies only to a dozen or so authors who are household names), or one day the writer is ready to open the dam, there is a lot of perseverance.  Occasionally (rarely) a person doesn't know they want to be a writer, and they simply write about someTHING that attracts a lot of attention, but even in these situations, you usually find that the person has a pretty fly background with writing...or they have it ghost written by someone who does.

So...to honor perseverance...today's quotations:


Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, 'press on' has solved, and always will solve, the problems of the human race.

Calvin Coolidge

If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying. "Here comes number seventy-one!" 

Richard M. Devos

With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes satin. With time and patience the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown.

Chinese Proverb

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