The Power of Commitment: Why You Should "Do" Instead of "Try"
I encourage you to dare mighty things...and here are some steps to get you there.
“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failures, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” — Teddy Roosevelt
Today I’d like to tell you a story that I hope will inspire you to find a way to ignore both your own critical voice and help alleviate any external creative pressure you may be under. Big tasks, I know. I’ve included a mini-workshop at the end to help guide you through the process. Okay? Here we go.
I was twenty when I presented my senior thesis to a room full of English majors and professors. It was the culmination of three years of creative writing: a group of twenty poems, the best I could glean from those years of work, and my first attempt at a short story. I was, as always, in a Hemingway phase. The short story, “The Lighthouse,” was a murder mystery set in England, overlaid with a gothic, penetrating fog that whisked away souls. Hands shaking, gorge rising, I stood in front of the room and tried to read without passing out — public speaking wasn’t exactly my thing.
When it was over, my peers clapped, but the dour expressions of the faculty outstripped their applause. They’d already read my thesis, already formed their opinions. The department chair pronounced the short story “too informed by B-grade detective fiction.” Yes, the story was dark; yes, it was a clumsy first attempt at fiction. But my voice was there already, the same voice you will experience if you read any of my crime fiction. And I wanted to be a writer. (I already was, but sometimes, we need that affirmation from those we respect, don’t we?)
So I asked my thesis advisor for a recommendation to an M.F.A. program, and she shook her head sadly and sighed. “This isn’t the path for you. Your work isn’t good enough to be published.”
“Your work isn’t good enough to be published.”
The memory of that moment is still tactile and tangible enough to make me slump in my chair as I write it. It was more than a crushing statement. It changed the course of my life. Because stupidly, I listened to her. Instead of spending the next several years writing fresh material, honing my craft, finding my voice, I took her word for it. I believed her. And I quit writing.
Now, this story obviously has a very happy ending. My first job out of college was in the White House, in the Office of Science and Technology Policy. And I got into George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management, where, on the first night of classes, I met my future husband. So everything happens for a reason.
I worked full-time, went to school at night, and fell madly in love. I moved jobs to the Department of Commerce and eventually to Lockheed Martin on the FAA contract, which had me traveling all over the country. Those were full years, and good ones.
But there was a common theme to each position. I struggled. I chafed. I was good at what I did, but I can’t say I liked doing it. Time and again, I found myself in meetings with superiors who asked what the problem was. I had no answers. The problem was not them. The problem was the voice in the back of my head that screamed at me all day and all night. This isn’t you. This isn’t right. This isn’t who you want to be.
It can take only one person, and one sentence, to crush the creative flame entirely.
If my professor had just said, “You need more time to find your voice; keep writing, and try again in a few years,” I would have done that. Perhaps I would have written a drawer full of manuscripts if she’d given even the tiniest bit of encouragement. But I didn’t. I sought an entirely new path for myself. One that, as I said, has a happy ending.
After graduation, we got married, and a few years later, we moved to Nashville, where my husband is from. And everything changed.
The farcical means by which I returned to life as a writer — adopting a stray cat, going to work for the vet who saved her life, mopping up dog urine and assisting in castrations, and then, on day three of this unique situation, herniating a disc and needing back surgery — is fit for fiction itself. Or a really bad country music song. But…during my recovery, my local librarian turned me on to a writer named John Sandford, and something clicked. My magnetic poles shifted, and I had one simple, arrogant thought.
If he can do it, so can I.
Ah, hubris. My professor was right, of course. I wasn’t good enough to be published. Not then, and not when I started writing again.
And I wrote a book.
Or what I thought was a book. It was really a novella, but I didn’t know that. We didn’t have the same kind of access to the do’s and don’ts of publishing then as we do now. I didn’t know about writers’ organizations, awards, or—let’s be honest— anything. So I made a lot of rookie mistakes.
But I learned. I went to my first book signing—the amazing John Connolly—where I met both John, who gave me such superb advice (all good books find a home, work on that elevator pitch) and some fellow local writers, who invited me into their critique group. I began researching in earnest, deconstructing crime novels to see how the structure worked, going on ridealongs with the police department. I joined Sisters in Crime, began to write for a group blog, Murderati, used what I’d learned to pull what I could from the novella, and wrote a proper book. An agent saw my work online and, as fate would have it, asked to read my book just as I was crafting a query letter to him. Serendipity.
But he couldn’t sell my first book, and I was immediately plunged back into the abyss I’d spent so many years trying to crawl out of. That critical voice came back with a vengeance, roaring and clawing and biting, reopening the scars that were finally beginning to heal.
You aren’t good enough. You simply are not good enough.
This negativity lurks every minute of every day for us creatives. We allow others to make judgments for us. We allow reviews and acceptances, strangers who hate our work or love our work, to define us.
To be a writer, to come daily to the page, to slough off the voices of the naysayers, takes more than just a talent for stringing words together and machinating stories. It takes a determination to ignore the critics, the pettiness of your muse, the collective voice of the chorus singing your daily demise.
It is a process of natural selection, and only the adaptive survive. It takes courage, and a wee bit of denial, and a healthy ego. We have to believe the story we’re telling is interesting enough to capture the attention of the reader. With any luck, hundreds of thousands of readers.
So, when I finished wallowing in self-pity, I got back to it. I wrote my agent a new book, and he sold it, plus two others. Fifteen years after I stopped writing, I was finally back on the right path.
The intervening years have been a ride, with ups and downs like every writing career. But a career it is. I come to the page daily with hope, and a whopping dose of humility, because I recognize how very lucky I am. I’m doing what I love. That haunting voice, the one who screamed at me for years, who knew I shouldn’t have given up, is gone. I wake each day with gratitude and excitement, knowing I am doing what I was put on this earth to do. When I started, I didn’t have years of work in a drawer, and that is a shame. But I’ve made up for lost time, and I refuse to let someone else decide my life for me again. I dare mighty things. You should too.
Perhaps a better way of saying this is my most favorite quote in all the world. Master Yoda, that great mystic, said, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
Do. Or do not. There is no try.
Listen, you want this to work? You have to take chances. You must give in to your impulses every once in a while, trust your gut, know your own soul. You need to ignore the fact that the drop off the cliff is mighty and jump anyway.
Fear can inhibit your growth, not only as a writer but as a person. Fear is the most dangerous part of the creative life.
I do my best to ensure fear doesn’t get in my way, though it slithers in occasionally. But I would so much rather fail, put it all out there, and fall flat on my face than never try at all. Better to have loved and lost, right? It took me a while to reach this point, so don’t fret if you’re not there yet. You will be.
If you’re being rejected, it means you’re doing. The more you do, the more those rejections will turn into successes. You have to believe in yourself, believe you’ll make it, that you’ll break through and achieve what you want.
Early on, one of my biggest fears was working on multiple projects simultaneously. I was writing the first Taylor novel, and the head of my critique group kept suggesting I try writing a short story. I had a total deer-in-the-headlights reaction — I can’t.
I can’t deviate from my novel to try something else. I’ll get pulled off track. I’ll fall into the abyss and never return. I’ll never finish anything. The men will come and find me quivering in a corner, a trail of half-eaten sandwiches strewn throughout the house.
It’s incredible how good we are at getting in our own way. It’s so easy to slack off. Disrespect the muse. Forgo our discipline. Say yes, when we should practice saying no. Faith in ourselves, our work, and our process, is vital to our success, and we’re the best at sabotaging ourselves.
All of that is simply resistance rearing its ugly head.
Of course you can work on more than one thing at a time. And if you want to be a successful author, you’ll have to master that skill. The more you output, the more money you make, the greater your reputation grows, the more you’ll have to juggle.
Is it easy? Nope.
It’s a constant struggle. Writing one book, editing another, promoting a third — that’s the standard for anyone on a one-a-year schedule—is hard. Multiply that by two for two-a-years, etc. And you’ll be expected to write your books and possibly contribute essays to publications, or write short stories for anthologies. Add in touring and blogging and social media-ing and newslettering…. Not to mention, for many of you, a day job, and a family. All of this takes time, organization, and a concerted effort to stay on track.
BUT IF YOU RESPECT YOUR MUSE, SHE WILL RESPECT YOU.
Seriously. If you come to the page every day, she will reward you. If you do, it will happen.
So how do you respect your Muse? It’s such a fun thing to say, but how do you enact this for real?
Which brings me to our mini-workshop. These are things I wish my thesis advisor had thought to ask me instead of dismissing my creativity out of hand and proclaiming I wasn’t good enough.
The point of this exercise is to create achievable boundaries and goals for your creativity so you keep coming back to the page day after day. Grab your favorite notebook and a cuppa, and find a comfortable, quiet place. Envision what you want from your creative life, answering these questions:
What kind of writer, what kind of creative person, do you want to be?
Are you the good literary citizen type? Do you want to write your books and be left alone? Do you want to have an open dialog with your readers? Will you be diligent about deadlines or work when the spirit moves you? Is your creativity a job, or an ideal? Are you going to spend hours every week cultivating your online presence, or will you use that time to create new work?
What sort of career do you want?
Let’s be honest. Not everyone will write runaway blockbusters. There’s plenty of room for a solid, successful, six-figure annually career outside of that goal. Instead, ask yourself where your works fit in the genre you’re writing. What would a bookseller say about your work? Do you need to make a pivot—a new genre, a new publisher—to get where you’re going?
What is your dream?
New York Times bestseller? Six figures annually? Adaptation? Writing a book a year? Trying a new voice in a new genre? Making a living on your Substack? Move from writing novels to screenplays? Connect deeply with readers, and to heck with the accolades? Anything and everything you want from this creative life goes here.
What is your end career goal?
This, though, is where you need to be realistic. Try very hard to choose things that are in your control, like how much you output, the kinds of stories you want to tell, how you want to make readers feel, how you want to be remembered. It’s very hard to say I want to be #1 on the NYT for 52 weeks because that is entirely out of your hands. Something more concrete, like I want to write 20 books, I want to try my hand at fantasy as well as thrillers, I want to be known for evoking a certain emotion in my reader are more realistic.
What does your perfect day look like?
This is *very* important because this particular issue—how you approach your creative day, knowing you and only you are responsible for what you let into your life—both defines you as a creative and is totally within your control. This is a good place to write down a schedule you’d like to keep, the hours you want to spend on your work, and also, don’t forget to set aside time for reading, exercise, parenting, and living a life.
Reminding yourself that you are in control of what you let in is incredibly powerful. It gives accountability, and you can easily recognize when you’ve lost the rhythm of that perfect day because you spent the morning on Instagram instead of writing.
Write all of this down. Put it somewhere you can access it readily if you need a boost. And when you get frustrated or pulled away from the scenarios you’ve envisioned, ease yourself back into alignment. Return to your perfect day, and time block your way into it for a week until the habit reasserts itself. Read through your goals, and as you achieve them, make more. Be flexible, but be disciplined. And to hell with the critical voice who wants you to think you can’t. Be it internal or external, she is a liar.
You can do this. I promise.
Now, go write.
Wow. Just wow! Thank you for this, J.T. You can’t imagine how perfect the timing is for me to read this. I’ve been grappling with so many regrets that I didn’t start my writing career sooner and with more intention and discipline. I’ve been juggling so much of the marketing, being a new writer on Substack, and president of my local chapter of Sisters in Crime (love that you’re a member!). All of which are important, but nothing more so than writing the next book. Thank you ❤️