The Art of Being Patient With Yourself & Persistent With Your Craft

There’s a passage that I just read in Bob Dylan’s outstanding autobiography, Chronicles Vol 1, where he talks about starting to write his own songs, which is not where he started his career as a musician and singer. He did, in fact, sing nothing but other people’s songs for the first several years.

“I can’t say when it occurred to me to write my own songs. I couldn’t have come up with anything comparable or even halfway close to the folk song lyrics is was singing…I guess it happens to you by degrees. You don’t just wake up one morning and decide that you need to write songs…Opportunities may come along for you to convert something–something that exists into something that didn’t yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what’s behind the misty curtain”

Bob Dylan

Well, we all know where that curiosity led. More than 800 songs, many of them classics. A stunning career in music, world wide icon status, and even a Nobel prize for poetry.
Not too shabby for just satisfying your curiosity.

Not Everybody Is Bob Dylan

But a lot of people, to some significant degree, have that same curiosity. They wonder about the world and ponder over how to express their feelings about it.
But like Bob also says.”It’s not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It’s not that easy.”
The hardest part of any creative endeavor is actually recognizing that this is something you want to do, or in some cases, are compelled to do, and then seizing the opportunity, pumping yourself up and getting started.
This requires a great deal of fortitude and will power. I know this because over the course the blogging part of my writing career I have had many conversations with people, where I end up telling them that getting started is the hardest part.
Once you get over that initial hurdle and you’re in the game, the main quality you have to summon up is patience.
I have read a great many biographies and autobiographies of people I admire. Not just because I am interested in what they achieved but the process they went through to get there.
The common thread is that nobody comes out of the gate fully formed. Everybody is a rough, and sometimes, a very rough draft of what they will ultimately become.
And the amount of success or satisfaction they achieve is going to be pretty much directly proportional to the amount of patience and persistence they bring to the party.

Writers Are Each Other's Best Cheerleaders

I have written a lot of posts here on the elements of blogging. I’m trying to share as much of this advice as possible, as are some of the other writers I know and respect here.
There are two main reasons why we are doing this.
First and foremost is to help those who really want to become true bloggers to get there, by giving them advice. This, in turn, will hopefully lead to a higher standard of quality in the blogging that is done here, which will be a key factor in its long-term growth and the success of the beBee brand.
The second reason is purely selfish. All writers love to read. So the higher the quality of the blogging here, the more good stuff we have to read. Pure and simple.

Patience & Persistence Cannot Be Overrated

I began writing when I was very young, like in my teens. When you’re young you don’t really know much about patience and persistence. It tends to look more like obsession than anything else.
But I plowed on, all through university and a couple years of retail management until I got to the point where I realized that there was no turning back and that I had to turn my hobby into a career or there would be something really important missing in my life.
It didn’t take a long time, but in the time it took, I focused on absorbing as much knowledge about writing as I could. I believed instinctively that knowledge was indeed power. And the road to gaining that knowledge was paved with patience and persistence.

The Advice

If you are a writer, you know it. It’s just there in you. It’s a need that you have to express yourself in words. It’s a desire that you have to share whatever wisdom or insight you have into the way things are with others.

And, IMHO, the best way to get to the point where your insights could have some validity and the wisdom you accumulate can be expressed is simply by doing it. By writing every day. By learning about the craft. By reading about people. By opening yourself up to as many influences as you can hold. And by realizing that it’s not so much about a fixed goal as it is about all the miles you travel and the reams of writing you create along the way.
Your writing feeds off itself. The more you do the better you get. The better you get, the more you love it. The more you love it, the more it radiates out and touches other people.
It’s the nature of the beast. And you can ride it for your whole life and enjoy the hell out of it if you have the patience and persistence to become one with it in your mind.

jim out

If you would like to read more of my posts on writing you can access them at https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray

If your business has reached the point where talking to an experienced  communication professional would be the preferred option to banging your head against the wall or whatever, lets talk.
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