The Most Important Skill to Have as a Writer

we're sisters best friends and authors on a mission to help you stoke your creative fire and live the life of your dreams we believe that purpose fuels passion and that creativity is your secret weapon for mass construction there's never been a better time to bless the world with your dream realized you're listening to the kate and abby show what's up guys welcome back to another episode of the kate and abby show this is episode 39 and today we are talking all about grit perseverance endurance basically the most important skill to have if you want to be successful as a writer so the truth about any creative career is that it's not all fun and games okay it takes grit so if you ever struggle to push through the hard days the slow days the boring days keep listening this episode is for you before we get started we have to thank our sponsors who are you you guys keep us going you're the ones who support this show and keep it going and we appreciate you so much so if you get value out of this show go to patreon.com the kate and abby show and help us keep this show sponsorship free interruption free and alive and well on youtube and all the other places okay so let's jump right into today's topic grit the thing about grit is a lot of writers don't expect to need it i think yeah you go into writing and you are enjoying yourself a lot usually at the beginning and um you kind of think it's all gonna be fun and games and then it gets to some hard hard times slow days tedious days and you're like dang this is not as fun as i thought it was gonna be maybe this isn't the job for me maybe this isn't the career path for me right maybe i'm not meant to be a writer yeah exactly and i think it starts out with a lot of people don't even understand what grit means yeah like when we hear gritty we think of like you know being all like badass and you know like doing all these epic things that are hard and stuff like that you know which it can be right but it doesn't have to be like the big epic monumental thing right grit is not actually writing a book is a really monumental thing don't get me wrong right you know it is it is for sure but the grit like comes in when you might want to give up you might want to stop for the day you might want to set it aside and not think about it anymore and you push yourself through anyway yeah over and over and over and over again right endurance you have to you have to have endurance you have to persevere through the hard times because there will be boring stretches especially once you get into editing a book which is going to happen whether you like it or not unless you never finish it which isn't great you know you don't want to do that you want to finish your book so eventually you're going to have to edit it and that's going to be boring it's going to be tedious there will be days when you're thinking oh i don't want to do this anymore yeah and i can totally relate to that because that's where i am right now i'm finishing up an editing project and it gets tedious it gets old and you want to stop and you want it to be over yeah you want it to be done all by itself and you not have to lift a finger but it doesn't happen that way yeah and i think that the tediousness should be embraced in a way because if it's not tedious if it never gets tedious for you then that means you're never taking it seriously right to me it's like looking back on something if it never got tedious then you never took it seriously you know just as kind of a rule of thumb that's kind of how i look at everything because anything that's like creative is fun for a while but then when you start to like take it seriously it gets more more and more tedious so i think that that's actually a good thing absolutely you know because it is a sign that you're mastering something if something is new and exciting right all the time you're never getting out of that new stage that's the honeymoon phase right where everything is like new and fresh and exciting yeah things that come to mind for me are like kata in karate right after a while kata becomes like not tedious but it's not new and you're not thinking about every move because it's become old hat right and that's when you start to finally get good when you're getting into the finesse movements not just the big gross movements right fine-tuning fine-tuning yeah yeah and it will get kind of redundant redundant is a perfect word for redundant but that but everything does and i was thinking about it in terms of also like learning an instrument or even a song on an instrument a piece of music and how you have to play it over and over again this morning i was practicing some music on the piano and i was playing this one piece over and over again i'm like i'm probably annoying my parents right now but it's like that's just what you have to do you know in order to reach the point that you need to reach i won't say perfection because that's subjective but practice does get you closer to perfect and it's literally it works this way with everything everything is tedious when you do it over and over again whether that is learning an instrument learning a song writing a book building a house parenting your children all of it gets tedious after a while but that doesn't mean you're doing a bad job or you're not good at it or it's not the thing for you it just means that you're actually getting better at it because with every step you are making progress right yeah exactly i think that's important that's an important phase to go through to reach because it shows growth and so the grit comes in i think the grit itself is the force that pushes you forward the force that prevents you from throwing up your hands and walking away from it because you can acknowledge that what we just described is taking place that growth is there that slow burn transformation is there yeah and it might be boring like writing might be boring sometimes even if it's your dream job i think every dream job is boring to the person who has it like it seems like a dream job a lot of times to the person who doesn't have it like oh they get up every day and they just do everything they love and have fun from dawn till dusk but that's usually not the case even with people who have tons of money and they do like really fun things it seems with their life and they seem to have a great exciting life filled with just happy things they still have to get up every morning and do things that they don't like to do right and a lot of times if they're business owners or they started their own uh empire of business um they have to do a lot of things that they don't like that are boring because that's just part of the job so your dream job might be boring it's not going to be all exciting in sunshine rainbows all the time every day right that's okay because boredom is a side effect of mastery that's what i always like to say boredom is a side effect of mastery so it actually should be embraced yeah it's kind of like the the um principle of hickatee and karate i'm gonna go karate geek for a minute here but hicate in japanese is um means this principle of pushing and pulling at the same time and how that tension is creating the movement you need for a stance or a punch or kick whatever for the technique you're using and that's what makes the technique is having both the force of pushing forward and pulling back both of those combining forces working working together like yin and yang and it's kind of the same for work yeah really for your writing there's going to be things that are tough that help to form you into a better writer to make you stronger to make you more capable and more experienced but they're going to be tough to go through and then there's going to be things that are enormously fun there's going to be those gentle soft things that come very easily like maybe the writing process itself i think a lot of writers would be able to relate to that comes really easily the editing that's more of pushing through it but you can use those two principles to work together right yeah that's a that's a great analogy i like that right i'll i'll be um i'll try to counter your sage analogy with it with a more conventional analogy that keeps coming to mind which is the tortoise and the hair like if if there was ever a story about grit it is the tortoise and the hair because the tortoise has grit but the hair has like motivation and energy but it doesn't last as long so even if it seems like the going is slow it's better to have grit and be more like the tortoise and actually make it to the finish line than to rush and have all this motivation that burns out and leaves you feeling kind of disappointed in yourself because you give up too quickly so basically the point is don't be in such a hurry to get to the finish line that you don't run a good race because wise words because it is it is really a race it's your own race you're not in competition with anybody else but you're running your own race and sometimes slow and steady is the best option because that does involve grit and involves getting up every day and running a mini race so to speak to accomplish the next step it doesn't even have to be this big focus i think that can kind of psych you out sometimes you're too focused on the big picture right and it gets overwhelming it does instead of thinking just today what do i have to do today right to make that action step or to accomplish this small goal that will bring me closer to the big goal right with writing a book i think a lot of us over i know i have in the past overwhelm ourselves with like oh i have to write this whole book instead of looking at i just have to write the next word the next sentence the next paragraph yeah and the book i'm currently writing has helped me a lot with this because the end is nowhere in sight and i'm nearly to 200 000 words and it's taught me to enjoy the process of settling slowly into a book and being in it and staying in it for the long game and not concerning yourself so much with wanting to get to the end enjoying being there right yeah that's the best way to write i think yeah because then you're totally in the moment you know it becomes more meditative yeah because writing can be really meditative if we let it be right but i think it takes like with real you know with meditation in general it takes a while to settle into it can take a long time to get into a place where you're comfortable with that and i think the same goes for riding where you might not feel comfortable at first you might still feel the need to rush through it it might you might get irritated you might have dry days and that's all okay yeah the grit comes with just show up yeah just show up even if you only write a few words show up yeah exactly and that's there's so much more power in that than all the motivation in the world um it's the drip on the rock so to speak um i don't know i don't even know if that's a popular metaphor i've always explained it basically it's the principle that a constant drip on a rock will drill a hole through the rock eventually but if you just dumped a bucket of water on the rock it would do nothing now it's technically way more water but it actually does nothing to the rock because it's just one moment of power it could even be a tidal wave one moment of power a thousand moments of persistence so that's the principle that i take with me and to pretty much everything i do um but especially writing because writing does feel like just a drip sometimes sometimes it feels like you don't have anything in you and maybe there's just one sentence i've mentioned this before on the podcast i think but some days when i don't feel like writing or it's not really a great writing day and i force myself to just sit down and see what happens i will end up writing not a lot but maybe like a couple sentences and maybe there's one line in there that i'm like that is golden and it was worth writing that day just to get that one line and so i think it's important to notice those little golden moments but also to just show up even if it feels like oh this isn't like a great writing day it might be just a drip on the rock but that will contribute to one day drilling a hole through the rock whereas the one great writing day won't bring you to the finish line immediately you know it takes persistence no matter what you do no matter what kind of writing day you're having yeah you're absolutely right on because i think so many of us and i know i've been guilty of this before look at writing as a thing that will get us further into our book like it will help us accomplish something and that's fine there's nothing wrong with that but i think there's a layer a layer deeper which is the art of writing and showing up just for that not even for the progression but for the simple minimal present act of writing just for however long it is for whatever it is just showing up for that like when you show up to do yoga let's say if you do yoga um you're not really trying to necessarily accomplish a great big goal you know oh i'm doing this so i can finish doing yoga forever you know it'd be weird it'd be weird no you're doing yoga right now because you enjoy doing yoga right now yeah you know what i mean it's it's such a simple concept that i'm almost having a hard time like yeah no idea what you mean because you get like kind of caught up in the finish line and feeling like well i have to finish this book and you're looking towards that moment when you'll be done with it but then it's over and so the fun part is then over you know right kind of rediscovering that wonder yeah exactly the child-like wonder that we all used to have for the world and for writing if you started writing when you were younger i know when i started writing when i was younger it was like this adventure waiting to be gone on and it didn't really matter what i wrote or how good it was i'm making air quotes but it was just for the joy of doing writing for right of doing the the action of writing yeah exactly that's so important and that's where i think a lot of our inspiration comes from you know yeah absolutely is the joy of it yeah we were talking about that recently how you have to have joy in your writing yeah that's a priority yeah so start thinking about what are you doing today what are you writing today do you love it rather than when am i going to be done with this right like you said about about yoga about anything else really same with music like i was thinking about that when i was when i was practicing piano this morning i was thinking about how it's such a meditative thing to play music and to be really absorbed in what you're playing at the moment and you're not at least i'm not thinking about the end of the piece i am where i am in the piece when i'm playing it and i can't be anywhere else like if my mind even wanders a little bit to the next set of notes i mess up because i have to be fully in flow on what i'm playing right this second you know that's cool so i think it's sort of the same way with writing obviously you know i'm a big outliner so i like to think ahead of what am i going to write next but when you're actually in the process of writing this sentence i think it's good to take your time although plotters are like the exact opposite of people who rush like you don't rush or anything you like take so much time to write out one scene true even though you're thinking ahead you're not rushing right so i think that's more process related yeah that's just how you do it yeah but it's just as it's still just as thought out and mindful right exactly yeah and i hate rushing and feeling like i'm rushed while i'm writing which is um i made a video before nanowrimo during nanowrimo about how to write faster without rushing because i feel like every right faster piece of advice i've ever heard has to do with rushing and word sprints and timing yourself and just writing really fast and not thinking about what you're writing but that has never worked for me because i have to like what i'm writing right and i have to really be thinking about it and enjoying the process of crafting this sentence right you know i think the best one of the best processes i've found for writing is to pause and ask yourself like get really quiet and still and ask yourself what exactly am i trying to say that's so funny because i do the exact same thing and i don't think that we ever talked about this really oh my god it's a little bit different i asked myself what exactly is going on here yes yes yes that's because i don't think the same way i don't think i've ever talked okay so a lot of times we're thinking or we can get caught up in thinking what would sound good yeah right right what would sound good but that is not what anybody wants it's not what you want it's not what your reader wants what we want to know is what exactly is going on what the heck is going on what exactly is happening you know what i mean it seems so simple and that will cut out so much striving to try to sound flowery or prosy or sound a certain way does this sound pretentious does it sound like i'm trying to be some other author just ask yourself what exactly is happening and then delete every other file from your mind and just write exactly what is happening because that's what will happen in the editing process anyway the editing process is going back through a bunch of pretentious moments where you were trying to sound flowery and trying to dig out from that what exactly was happening yeah you know what i mean yeah down to um make it as simple as possible right sort of thing what exactly it's like decluttering a house yeah the next step what is this one step that you're on don't think about all the steps ahead of you that's kind of like what this whole podcast is about is grit perseverance but also what is it you're doing right now and how can you just fully embody this right now without thinking about the big long road ahead of you so whether you're writing or whether you're editing editing i feel like is the same way too because even though it's a different process you still have to just be thinking about this one sentence usually unless it's like a developmental edit where you're thinking about the plot but line edits you're thinking about what is this one sentence how can i make it better how can i make it smoother and mean more to the reader right you know so it's like a one step at a time process there too exactly and all of it is i mean you know when you're thinking about the plot you can't think about everything at once yeah you know what i mean so all of it the more minimal you can become the happier i think you're gonna be with your writing with your entire process yeah um because you're really just stripping away all this extra stuff that you don't really need to be thinking about and you're spending a lot of energy thinking about it you know what i mean yeah yeah same with like formatting even like you're saying every every aspect of the process what if you're an indie publisher um or if you just like formatting like me formatting is also quite a meditative experience when you don't want to rip your hair out who else likes formatting crickets because your software is misbehaving but when it's all going good you know it's pretty relaxing um and that's also a one step at a time thing so it's really like all of these things are one step at a time right and you have to just give it your all right now for what you're doing right now and not not worry so much about the whole process or the whole race what's this one step right and that's where grit comes in yeah is to just take it one step at a time and just then go to the next step then go to the next step don't think about the whole big picture and overwhelm yourself with it so that you can't go on because exactly everything is just too much exactly and take a break when you need to yeah that's another thing so you don't have to if you're really stuck who else is annoyed with how my medallions keep hitting this table i know i was gonna [Music] um what was i saying now everyone's gonna be like what's a medallion what is she talking about go check out the video if you want to see the special medallion attached to my jacket um i don't know what you were saying now taking it one step at a time oh that you can take breaks yeah so like if you're stuck you know take a break so often we give up on things that we just needed to break from you know what i mean exactly and we underestimate ourselves yeah exactly that's another thing that's a whole other topic and um one of the quotes that i printed off that i wanted to read to you guys to close this grit topic out it's one of my favorite quotes and it goes we can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough and that's a quote by helen keller so mike drop great quote love that we hope you guys enjoyed this episode of the kate and abby show if you did give it a thumbs up if you're on youtube if you haven't seen the youtube video version of it go to kate's youtube channel which is youtube.com ka emmons and go check out abby's youtube channel if you haven't already which is youtube.com abbyyemens and again thank you to our patrons your support keeps us going if you get value out of this show go to patreon.com the kate and abby show and help us keep this show alive and free of interruptions we so appreciate you guys and all of your support share this episode with a writer friend of yours and give give us a nice rating on apple podcasts if you feel like it and as always stay stoked stay stoked and rock on

Channel: K.A. Emmons

Views: 11,015

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Id: halVXl2zs3U

Length: 25min 58sec (1558 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021