As a taurean I’m often told that I’m too stubborn for my own good. I like to think of it as strong willed rather than stubborn… but that’s just me. I’m sure that there are folk who don’t agree with me.
I’m bringing this up for a couple of reasons. First, to coincide with an apology. I follow very many blogs, some of them belonging to you fine people who come here and read my words three times a week. I’m apologising because after my hospital stay I have fallen so behind in my reading of blog posts that at present my email contains in excess of 300 posts waiting to be read. I’m behind by a month and half. This means all of my comments on your words are a month and a half late, so to speak.
The stubborn part comes into play because it would be easy enough just to delete the backlog and stay up to date now. Its easy for me to read my emails these days because I can do it on my phone while I’m reading. So… why don’t I just cut my losses and just start reading from today’s date? Well… because I might miss something. I firmly believe that if I delete a bunch of posts, one, if not all of them, are guaranteed to have information in them that I want/need, or conversations that I want to be part of. That’s just Sod’s Law. So… even though my inbox continues to fill day after day after day, I am persisting in reading all of my delivered posts from oldest date to newest and leaving comments and/or likes as I see fit.
Stubborn? Oh yes.
The second point is more important however.
I feel that one has to have some level of stubbornness about them to be able to pursue the career of writing. You need that bull headed drive to keep you going when writer’s block, rejection letters and impossible scenes conspire to get you down. You have to cling to the knowledge that you are doing what is best for you and that one day you will get where you want to go. You have to keep on plugging at your work even though everything around you suggests you should give up. You need to be able to shove aside the niggling little voice that insists you could be doing something else and work at your craft harder and harder, again and again, over and over until you have have what you want. An agent… a completed manuscript… the perfect scene.
All of this takes a little bit of stubborn will, so, I think, if I have a bit of that in me so much the better!
What do you guys think? Have you ever been told you’re too stubborn, or that you’re too much of something else which, in fact, is a disguised blessing?
Writing: A Conversation Without Interruptions 