Publishing Entrepreneur

You hear long distance runners talk about the “hitting the wall.” They will be running well, they say, over quite long distances. Then, suddenly, they feel that they can’t go on, that they have reached the limit of their endurance and they can’t continue a step farther. At this point some give up and drop out. But the real winners, those who have and reach their goals, understand about the wall. They know that if they continue on, stride by stride, and do not give in to the strain, they will pass through the wall, tap into unexpected reserves of energy and strength, and carry the race through to its conclusion.

In our writing, too, we often hit the wall. Things are going well, according to plan. Suddenly, difficulties arise. You can’t finish a chapter, a character suddenly seems less interesting than you intended, self-doubt perches firmly on your shoulder, whispering “Who do you think you are, a writer? This stuff stinks.” You feel so overworked and worried that you are tempted to say the heck with it and throw in the towel. This often happens just when you seem on the verge of real and substantial success. It is a critical moment. If you will persevere in following your plan—writing the next page, sending out the next query—you can break through. The wall is gone and there’s smooth sailing ahead. Often a new idea or opportunity will suddenly surface and come to your aid.

Very often, if you keep on keeping on, you will break through the wall. You never know just when or where your next great success is going to come from. After all, you can only see as far as the horizon. But when you reach that point there is always a new horizon, one that becomes visible only as you tough it out and continue—at whatever the cost in effort and dogged determination—to make forward progress toward it.