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“When I got my rejection slip…I pounded a nail into the wall above the Webcor [phonograph]…and poked [the rejection slip] onto to the nail…By the time I was fourteen (and shaving twice a week whether I needed to or not) the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing. By the time I was sixteen I’d begun to get rejection slips with handwritten notes a little more encouraging.” - Stephen King
Stephen King's memoir, On Writing, is one of the best books I've ever read. It gives great insight into how one of the prolific writers of our time got his start (and continues to create). Something I'm noticing more often in the various biographies and memoirs I see is the gap between when a now-famous individual "started" something and their eventual big break.
Cal makes two great points about King's career. First, King tried to sell his writing from the very beginning and as such got brutally honest feedback. Second, he constantly aimed slightly above his current skill level. There is a third point buried in this article that I'd like to shine a little bit more light on: there was a huge gap between King's first starting to write and his first novel being published. King started writing while he was in school and didn't publish his first novel, Carrie, until he was 27. That's a seriously long time. I think it can be easy to see prolific creators and automatically assume they've been creating incredible work from day one. That is rarely, if ever, the case.
What were you doing 10 years ago? In my case, I was a sophomore in high school. And I certainly wasn't working on research, non-fiction writing, or coaching. Were you working on your current career 10 years ago?
Like your mother probably told you, patience is a virtue. I think that gets overlooked quite a bit by our always on, constant information, frenetic culture. Keep plugging away. Keep creating. Take care of the process behind your work and the outward success will eventually follow.
Top image from Imgembed.
This is a cross-post from SamSpurlin.com.
Sam Spurlin is a PhD student and personal coach fascinated with the nature of work. He writes about positive psychology, personal development, and conscious living at SamSpurlin.com.