The Power of Ignorance

What were you most ignorant about as an author before starting?

I have lost track of how many times I’ve said, “If I knew how hard this would be when I started…”

• Writing a readable short story.

• Publishing a readable short story in a literary magazine.

• Writing a readable novel.

• Publishing a readable novel.

• Selling a piece of writing to my own family members.

• Convincing a family member to read a book I wrote that I convinced them to buy.

• Selling a piece of writing to a stranger.

• Convincing one person that my dreams have value.

• Writing a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth readable story.

Every darned story is as hard to make readable as the one before it. Had I known the process would never become easier, assured, guaranteed, I would have quit. Without a doubt, if I’d known the fool this epic would make of me, I’d have quit.

STOP IT!

A good many of you reading this just thought, If you would’ve quit, you were never meant to have _______________.

There’s a handful of problems with that kind of thinking. Let’s tackle as many as we can starting with the most obvious one. You can’t undo history so never-meant-to-have is impossible.

You wanna know the worst of the worst though? If you’re the kind of person who preaches reasonable goals so you can have a healthy self-esteem, you are the person who never tried for anything worthwhile. You only aimed at things you could visualize, and you even failed to accomplish many of those thing!

If you think I was never meant to have _____________ because I admitted I’d have quit had I known how hard the going would be, you’re ignoring how many times you tried and failed, got up and tried again.

I quit smoking cigarettes, wrote nine good novels, dozens of good short stories, sold thousands of my books, won short story competitions, married a legit hottie with a brain like Ludovico Einaudi, banked a million bucks in twenty-four months, saw the inside of a jail at the crown of the globe and lived to tell the truth.

Ignorance is More Resilient

I think you should start celebrating ignorance and embracing it in frightening ways. If you want to do something, do it without second thought?

Do you want to run a marathon? Lace up those shoes.

Would you like to have a bestselling novel? Write it. Publish it. Prepare your thank you speeches.

Do you think you can swim the English channel? Get those water wings inflated. It’s all yours for the taking.

You can, and it will be harder. Harder than the hardest version of hard you can imagine.

If you embrace the resilient power of ignorance and go forward, you live the life few others believe exists. In the words of Chris Martin, “Nobody said it was easy / No one ever said it would be this hard / Oh, take me back to the start / I was just guessing at numbers and figures / Pulling the puzzles apart / Questions of science, science and progress / Do not speak as loud as my heart”

Perhaps You Need To Be Told It’s Okay

It’s okay. I am rooting for you. You can do everything you refuse to quit on.