Keeping At It

Today, literary agent Jennifer Jackson cited two posts by clients that demonstrate the value and necessity of persistence. Jay Lake describes the span of twenty years between writing his first story and his first sale:

Just shy the 20th anniversary of my first short story, and dozens upon dozens upon dozens of short stories and three novels into my efforts to become a writer, I move to Oregon, attend my first OryCon, where I first meet mme_publisher and join the Wordos. Start writing again for serious. April, 2001 I sold my first short story, "The Courtesy of Guests", to Bones of the World.

And Elizabeth Bear details the extensive rewriting for her latest novel:

Blood and Iron, for the record, is my most-rewritten book. The original concept dates from the eighties; the first draft of portions from oh, 1990 or so, the first complete draft from winter 2002. That first complete draft was irretrievably broken. I rewrote it extensively twice (including unpersoning characters and major plot changes) and gave it a pretty thorough line-edit twice before [Jackson] saw it. Segue to 2003, when she told me it was still broken. At which point I took it apart, restructured it heavily, cut 40,000 words or so, added 60,000 words or so and two POV characters (and removed one), and rewrote it again, followed by another clean-up pass. At which point we agreed that maybe it wasn't broken any more.

It's tough to take such a long view on a piece of work, or on one's writing career. I want things to take off now. Yesterday. Okay, maybe five years, but twenty?! Can I start counting from when I wrote my first short story in grade school? Or do I have to write a hundred?

"Persistence is probably the single most common quality of high achievers. They simply refuse to give up. The longer you hang in there, the greater the chance that something will happen in your favour. No matter how hard it seems, the longer you persist the more likely your success." --Jack Canfield