TAGR #8: Persistence

The best way I know of teaching the principles of Think and Grow Rich is to relate them to other things we’ve already discussed. Look at the steps of “Lifewriting for Writers”:

1. Write a sentence a day
2. Write 1–4 short stories a month
3. Polish and submit
4. Don’t rewrite except to editorial request
5. Read 10X what you write
6. Repeat this process 100X

This advise has, so far as I know, worked for everyone who has ever tried it. I don’t believe anyone has gotten past story twenty-six before publishing. Note the application of PERSISTENCE in these six steps. Every step demands that you do certain things every day, day after day. Step #6 makes it explicit: you have to be willing to keep going after others quit. After it is reasonable to say “it should have happened by now.”

So I estimated it would take 35 stories, based on comments from dozens of different writers. All I did then was TRIPLE that amount, to put the goal posts sufficiently distant that students would know to ignore the negative voices in their heads. But at the same time, the goal posts are a finite distance: if you write a story a week, you’ll hit that point in two years.

IMO, ONLY the person who has repeated this pattern 100X gets the right to ask if they should quit. Yes, there comes a point to give up a specific plan, but when I formulated this I gave a ton of safety room for learning, growing, dealing with fear and…