“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
Ernest Hemingway
I am a Christian. I don’t usually mix that into this blog on
my writing life. It’s not that I am ashamed of it in any way. As Popeye would
say, “I am what I am, and that’s all what I am.” However, this quote by
Hemingway lends itself so well to my experience as a Christian and a writer
that I had to pursue it.
I was born into Christianity, but I have spent every day
since learning to become a Christian. Someday, I might just make it. I make no
secret of the fact that I do not practice what I preach. I preach Jesus Christ,
the perfect God-Man. My practice of imitating Him is far from perfect. Yet my
imperfections do not hinder me from waking each day thinking that this will be
the day I move one step closer to that goal.
What does that have to do with writing? Just this, I believe
writers are born not made. God gives to some people a natural talent for putting
words together to tell a story and without that gift, they soon turn to other
pursuits. In that sense, I was born to write.
Writing, like Christianity, is both a gift and a discipline.
The gift becomes only what the recipient makes of it. No one who is serious
about writing is exempt from putting forth the effort involved in learning to
write well.
I have met people who think their latent talent is good
enough. Those people’s visions of their future success as a writer are more
delusions of grandeur than anything else.
I still have a long way to go to write well, and not nearly
enough years left to get there, but I am persistent. That’s a nice way of
saying that I’m stubborn as a mule. Fortunately, persistence may be the most
important lesson a writer needs to learn.
In the words of a man famous for speaking few words, Calvin
“Silent Cal” Coolidge, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.”
It’s okay to let the world think it all comes so easy. Let
them dream of the glamour and fall for the mystique of writing a novel—creating
fantasy worlds is what you do. Smile and let them think you were born with it.
Maranatha
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