David's Blog

Southwestern Lesson: Persistance and Faith

This summer I have intimately experienced and learned the value of persistance and faith in the daily and weekly microcosms that repeat themselves out here in the bookfield. I am psyched about translating these lessons and experiences into the macrocosm of my 'real' life.

Every day, I wake up at 6:00AM. I get up, get ready for the day, take a cold shower, get dressed and go off to breakfast. Then we eat, do execs, and drive to our sales locality. When I am knocking on doors and feel like no one is ever going to buy I can get discouraged, but today (and other days too) I realized that I always sell something eventually. Everyday someone somewhere buys some of my books. It has happened with such consistancy that I feel like I can almost take it as a given.

Now, this applies to my life in sooo many ways. To get the sale(s) that eventually come before the end of the day I have to keep working. I have to go to the next house. I have to continue smiling and greeting prospect after prospect. I have to show the books to 30+ people everyday, and after doing this I will surely make one or more sales in that day.

Writing
I want to write a book. I'd like to publish a book.

I felt this same way about poetry four or five years ago. What had to happen? Well, at that time I didn't write much or often. I'd try my best to make my poems as "perfect" as possible. After writing for a few years I had amassed several poems. Maybe close to one hundred different poems on all different topics covering a variety of themes. Finally, I had two poems published and they've been published several times in different anthologies. They are nothing serious, but I now have a few poems that people actually find interesting and enjoy.

Now I am Blogging. I write at least one entry every week and I make a concerted effort to post 15 entries a month. I do not try to make every entry perfect. I have done that, but I gave it up. Now I just try to keep writing. Every once in a while I will write one that I really like, one that will receive many comments, or one that other people like a lot. I am even willing to bet that I have an entry posted at this site that people who don't even know me would benefit from or at least enjoy. This is going to be my 226th published entry (I write some just for me that I do not publish.) So, it has taken a lot of persistance and faithfulness in my writing to get to this point where I have a few entries like I just mentioned. I even have an daily average of 60 to 70 visits to my site every month.

So, back to this book thing. I've got a few ideas for books. I don't think I want to do fiction at this point, but I do want to write books. So... time to get started. I have actually fleshed out an idea for a book this summer that I plan to write this Fall. I want it done by Christmas. This book might not be good. It could even suck, but that is not the issue. The reason I want to write this book is to get started on the path of writing books. I may have to write 30 books to finally have one that I like, one that others like, and/or one that is published -- just like out here in the bookfield.

This is a totally new paradigm in my thinking. It has come over time -- it didn't just happen this summer, but it is wildly different from my perfectionistic thinking that I'd get a masterpiece the very first time (or two.) Now, I am excited about putting it into action in the rest of my life. Anticipating that I may have to write thirty books before I have one that I love makes me more prepared for what will likely be a long journey, but I am excited about getting started and I am mentally ready for the mountains of work that I will soon need to plow through.

Posted by David at August 4, 2004 02:57 PM