On Writing: Guest post by J. Scott Savage

If you love writing so much that you can't quit. If you keep pushing yourself--amid all the pain, all the doubt, all the disappointment, and tears, and restarts, your will discover something incredible.

A couple of years after I graduated from high school, I signed up for a semester of classes at a local community college. Needing some exercise, I added what I thought was a recreational cross country running class. It turned out that what I had actually signed up for was the cross country team at a college that had won state JC Cross Country in California for multiple years.

I was in good shape and liked to run, but I hadn't run competitively for years and was obviously way over my head. What the team considered normal practices were harder than anything I had run before. I remember one practice they ran called 5-7's. It was six miles run at an alternating pace of five minute and seven minute miles. The 7 minute miles were your "recovery miles." Oh, my gosh. At that point I couldn't even run a seven minute mile.

Needless to say, I was the slowest member of the team. Not only that, but at our competitions, I lost every single race. If you've never come in dead last in a race, let me tell you it is extremely embarrassing.

Also, I was in so much pain. I woke up with leg cramps almost every night. I could never get enough to drink. Every day on the way home from practice, I would stop at 7-11 and buy the biggest Sprite they had and the biggest Slurpee they had, then I would mix the two together and drink them both. I had blisters, bruises, and so, so many scrapes from falling.
Honestly, I'm not sure why I stuck with it. Many, many times I considered dropping the class. But the other team members were genuinely nice and encouraging. I remember one time they invited me to a party, and because they knew I didn't drink, they bought an entire case of Sprite for me and my date. I also enjoyed the many beautiful places we ran. And although I was the slowest member of the team, and felt hammered after every run, my body was beginning to feel stronger.

I'd like the say that by the end of the year, I had progressed so much that I ended up helping my team win state, but I never came close to getting in the points. I didn't come close to qualifying for regions, forget state. In fact, I never came in higher than last place in a single race. But a funny thing did happen.

At the end of October, our Church held a regional Halloween 5 mile race. I think my dad was running and he encouraged me to come with him. I entered the race, and ran a 30 minute five miles, which was good enough for second place. That is not the fastest mile I've ever run, but it is the fastest five miles I've ever run, and the highest I've placed in a race. And after I got done, people were looking at me the way I looked at the other runners on my cross country team.

What I discovered was this. When I was running with the team, I felt like a failure. I was literally THE WORST runner on every course we raced. I couldn't see any improvement, because I was surrounded by runners so much faster than me. But, in fact, I WAS improving. A LOT! By placing myself in the company of some of the best runners around, I became, if not a state champion runner, a very, very good runner.

As authors, you have two choices.

You can surround yourself with mediocre work, patting yourself on the back because you fit right in. It's easier to compare yourself to writing that isn't that good. It makes you feel better about yourself. If you look at some of the garbage that is making money. You can tell yourself, "Hey, at least I'm better than that." You can surround yourself with people who say it's impossible to sell books anymore, and it's the industry, not us.

It might make you feel better about yourself. But is it making you a better writer?

Or you can read the best books you can find in your genre, study and learn from the best writers you can find. Then you can compare what you are creating to what you just read. You can surround yourself with people that are fighting the current and succeeding where many people are failing. Watch people who are winning awards, selling books, getting foreign rights, hitting lists, making movies.

And it will hurt. Oh, it will hurt. It will hurt so bad it will make you want to quit almost every day. One of the most discouraging things in the world is comparing yourself to the best in the field at something you love, and realizing how far you have to go, maybe even realizing that no matter how much you work at your craft, you may never be quite as good as some of the true greats.

And you might quit. I'm not going to lie. A lot of people take an honest look at how much work it will take to be truly great at their craft, and they give up. There's nothing wrong with that. We can't all be amazing at everything we do, Sometimes we dip our toe in the water, and decide it's not for us.

But if you love writing so much that you can't quit. If you keep pushing yourself--amid all the pain, all the doubt, all the disappointment, and tears, and restarts, your will discover something incredible.

While you've been telling yourself you're not as great as or Stephen King, or JK Rowling, or whoever your guiding light is, you've become a much better writer than you were. By learning from the people you admire and striving to bring your writing to their level, you've upped your craft to levels you didn't even realize you were reaching. And you'll be shocked to discover that now there are people looking up to you and using you as their own guiding light.


(From a message he shared on Facebook May 14th, 2016. Shared with permission)