Modern Wisdom: Consistency is even rarer than talent or enthusiasm

An excellent video by Modern Wisdom about the key to success on the Internet. He says, 'Consistency is even rarer than talent or enthusiasm.' To be honest, we don't think we're all that successful on the internet. This blog has never gotten the following we wanted, and we consider our social media forays a failure. 

Still, we're a hell of a successful writer, and that's where the consistency comes in. We spent a decade writing military history magazine articles and have something like a hundred in print. In all that time only a few were rejected. We kept worming our way into new magazines here and in Europe. We've never been told, 'No, Will, we're not interested in publishing you.' And by the way, when it came to article assignments we were always a great date. We never said no. 'Fulani Jihad? Five thousand words? No problem.' Now what the heck's the Fulani Jihad. You're damn right we wrote and published the article. 

Same goes for novels. A Line Through the Desert was a disaster. After spending thousands of dollars on advertising, after a year we sold....a hundred books. Not kidding. We just kept going. We really didn't know what else to do. So we wrote To Defend the Earth next and then Israel Strikes, and away we went. Modern Wisdom says, 'By not stopping you will separate yourself from everyone else.'

Modern Wisdom quotes the head of the Chinese weightlifting team who was asked what makes campions and he replied, 'Whoever can handle the boredom of daily training.' Boy is that ever true. Non-writers have this image of the creative process. They see the inspired author furiously pounding on the typewriter, reeling off page after page of prose. Excuse me while I hit the laugh track button. There's a reason why, when we talk about writing and editing, we use the word 'slog' a lot. 

To put everything above another way, consistency is the hard part. Writing isn't about the buzz for the idea. It's not about the juju. Lots of people get ideas. Lots of people want to write a novel and lots of people start them. Ad agencies, newspapers and publishing houses are filled with aspiring authors. The only question that matters is what are you prepared to do to finish it?