On my internet rambles, I came across a link to the post “[Nouns][Verb]” by Tami Moore. Intrigued by what I thought might be a post about grammar, I clicked through and found it wasn’t, but something else equally interesting. The post was in response to the post “In Which Your Hostess Gets Annoyed” on L’espirit d’escalier.
I’d recommend having a read of both, but the general jist is that if you want to call yourself a person who does something, you need to go do that thing. If you are a writer, you write. You don’t waste time talking about it, complaining about how hard it is and how much work it is.
I’m guessing the complaints might stem from the currently in-progress NaNoWriMo, but it is quite a common theme. How many people have something they have always wanted to do? I think most people would have at least one thing they either wished they could be good at, or hope they might be good at one day.
From the outside, to someone who has become somewhat successful at a skill, watching people struggle and be negative and seemingly refuse to keep trying at all would be frustrating. Of course it is hard, as anything that is worthwhile is hard.
But I think the key point is that sometimes there isn’t any hope or promise that you will improve.
Two examples were given in the original article: “pianists play… pilots fly”. When I think of those, there are some key differences, in my mind. I was lucky enough to have piano lessons as a child. It wasn’t easy to learn to play, I had to spend many hours practicing and perfecting my technique, but the difference was that I had a teacher who I went to every week, who gave me advice, encouragement and tasks to practice. She helped me improve.
I have also been lucky enough to know a pilot. He had to study hard to pass his exams. It would have been ridiculous for him to say “I’d like to fly one day”, but to not study or practice. But again, a key difference – he had lessons, mentors and tests to prove and structure his learning.
So maybe the actual problem is being self-taught, which I think is the case for many NaNoWriMo participants. Keeping motivated without encouragement while also not being able to recognise the good qualities or fixable problems in your work… it is hard. It is silly to give up when you haven’t “really tried”, but I think usually people do try, but they feel their efforts have been wasted, and they don’t know whether to persevere.
But maybe it is a test of growing up, to trust and believe in yourself and your own judgement of your skills, and to stubbornly set your chin and decide to keep going on – if it is your passion, it is your passion, after all.
Or maybe all we need is a kick up the bum and to stop over-thinking things and just go out and do. I just wish I could have a daily reminder 
As someone wise once said, “Do, or do not. There is no try.”.
