“Never, never, never, never give up!”

That opening quote often attributed to Winston Churchill is a misquote. He actually said something completely different (see image with real quote).

BUT I like the meat-and-potatoes misquoted version which gets to the heart of the matter quickly. Especially as it pertains to something I’ve been thinking about a lot the last few weeks. Forgive me, IF this month’s entry seems to be a bit of a soapbox. I’m hoping it will be more inspirational for you and for me instead.

You see, a few things have been bothering me lately. We keep hearing that times are dark and publishing is incredibly difficult right now. For EVERYONE. It’s true. Yet I admit that it’s a hard truth to accept. And sometimes when things get hard, it’s easy to just give up, to just let the darkness win. Wouldn’t that be easier?

Winston Churchill’s real quote was at a graduation speech. I like to think it’s really the speech Gary Oldman delivers in the movie DARKEST HOUR, but … sadly it’s not. And yet, it still feels like we are in a time that is as heavy as war-torn bombarded Europe during WWII.

We as creatives have the same options before us. Give up or keep going. Educators like myself face this struggle daily with kiddos who are struggling to learn new concepts. They want to cry, say they “can’t,” and simply give up. Every. Single. Time. We teach them growth mindset. A lot of us have heard of Grit and persistence, but we don’t tend to think of that as a creative skill. However, I’m telling you right here today that it IS!

This last summer, I was reading REAL ARTISTS DON’T STARVE by Jeff Goins and one of his examples stuck with me on this very matter. It was all about F. Scott Fitzgerald. We know him as the writer of the class THE GREAT GATSBY which is a highly successful book. NOW. But did you know that it was a huge flop at the time it was published? And it set F. Scott into a tailspin (alcoholism, no more novel writing, and early death).

Goins posits that Fitzgerald “was stubborn in the wrong things, losing the initial grit that had allowed him to persevere through early rejection. He forgot the big picture, which is that an artist’s job is not to be perfect but to be creating. … he had high hopes for his novel. Because of these expectations he fixated on the details, and when it flopped he was devastated. We need something to protect us against such disappointments, a way to steel ourselves agains the inevitable critique of our work.

The way we do this is not just by being stubborn about anything and everything, but through strategic stubbornness. We must not only use our stubbornness to succeed–we must harness it and apply it toward the right things, turning it into tenacity. Otherwise, what helps us succeed can also be the source of our undoing. We may find ourselves missing the big picture.”

So how do we harness this stubbornness? Goins goes on to talk about grit and stubbornness quite a bit (if you want to read more on it in his book). He has several more examples and also says this:

“Stubbornness can be an essential ingredient in making a living off your art. When you harness your strategic stubbornness, you give the world a reason to believe in your work.”

I’m not going to pretend I have this nailed down. I too struggle with despair from time to time with publishing and my art. I’ve learned to give myself 24 hours to wallow. Cry, complain, eat the cake (or whatever pity-sweet you like), then get over it and move on. And I’ve had some pretty high hopes dashed over the years. It happens on this creative journey!

SO how do we harness that grit and that growth mindset to help us “get over it”? Why am I even thinking about this right now?

Well, we had a writing conference a couple of weekends ago. Many in my local illustrators group said it was depressing. Now, I didn’t attend the sessions they went to (as I was busy running around in the background helping things to function), but I heard what they’re saying. A lot of the speakers were talking about how dark and hard things are right now in publishing. I completely understand. We ALL feel it, right? But they also heard “you might as well give up because you’re never going to succeed” and I immediately objected.

Before I get to that, let me take a beat right here to explain that I got a critique for a dummy during this conference that I’ve been working on for a few years now. It’s a passion project I’ve totally revamped head-to-foot quite a few times. What I heard was the market isn’t ready for it right now and I might need to pivot if I want to actually get this story published. “Not now” doesn’t make it a dud. BUT it made me realize that I should probably focus elsewhere for right now. And then I started sketching characters for a new dummy I’m equally excited about. That’s a positive pivot, even if it was hard to hear.

And yet, I have seen many writing and illustrating friends reach these same crossroads and just stop creating. It saddens me beyond belief when it happens. If I gave up when a manuscript was fighting me, I wouldn’t have ANY stories to write. I swear I complain to my husband all the time that every single idea fights me straight out of the hatch. I become bogged down in revision until they finally reach some form that shines. But I keep trying. If I gave up every time a story or art work had a bad critique, I’d never grow and learn. And I’ve had some feedback that has floored me over the years. One was so bad that I was sobbing so hard my brother (and roommate at the time) thought someone had died. If I gave up every time I received a rejection, I wouldn’t learn about the market and what it was accepting or looking for. In fact, if I gave up, I wouldn’t even have the one book that has been published with my name on it already. That story needed a complete revamp to succeed.

My belabored point (again, forgive me) is that this journey is all about pivoting and persisting. I have that growth mindset graphic over my writing desk with a note I added: “BE A TREE!” to remind myself to pivot and persist when I feel like wallowing. I interview TONS of picture book creators who are debuting (and publishing again) to remind myself that every journey to “success” looks differently. AND I keep setting deadlines and goals for myself to keep my movement going forward, even if it’s baby steps.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: ultimately, I look at my life as a creative journey. Success isn’t measured by publication (that would be a very high bar and possibly very sad measure of success for me). I look at success in smaller increments to keep me going. Success is a new draft I’m excited to work with. Success is creating a new illustration that I love. And for me, success is sometimes simply taking the precious time TO create at all. We only have one wild and precious life after all (to borrow from Mary Oliver).

Quoting Goins again:

“Sometimes when we see a creative person succeed, we dismiss his breakthrough as luck or the result of pure talent, but neither explanation is accurate. What often allows great work to get the attention it deserves is not a matter of only talent or luck but a matter of will. Can you stick around long enough to see your work succeed? Do you have enough grit to take a few critical hits and keep going? Or will you get discouraged at the first sign of failure?”

So I end with a quote from Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping song (yes this dates me horribly):

I get knocked down
But I get up again
You’re never gonna keep me down

AND a suggestion to go watch a feel-good movie where someone is facing a dark uphill battle, holding an impossible dream, and yet somehow succeeds. Like BRASSED OFF (which Chumbawamba quotes at the beginning of their Tubthumping song). Or one of my personal favorite movies: EDDIE THE EAGLE, THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED, and YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA. Just to name a few (all based on true stories, oddly enough). I’d love to hear some of your favorite feel-good movies in this vein!

Because sometimes we need inspiration to fire up our passion for this hard journey again. And we absolutely need community (friends to talk to who are struggling with the same things, make a huge difference).

But please, if you take away nothing else today, remember this: never, never, never, never give up! The world needs your art!