Octavia Butler on Persistence
What’s your most important talent as a writer?
“Writing is difficult. You do it all alone without encouragement and without any certainty that you’ll ever be published or paid or even that you’ll be able to finish the particular work you’ve begun. It isn’t easy to persist amid all that. […] Sometimes when I’m interviewed, the interviewer either compliments me on my ‘talent’, my ‘gift’ or asks me how I discovered it. […] I used to struggle to answer this politely, to explain that I didn’t believe much in writing talent. People who want to write either do it or they don’t. At last I began to say that my most important talent — or habit — was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It’s amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.”
— Octavia E. Butler
Emphasis mine. This is a bit of a longish quote, but I was loathe to cut any of it. As you can see it’s been cut a bit already, but the meaning of her words still stands.
I was first introduced to Ms. Butler through her book Kindred, a time traveling fantasy that has influenced some of my own work. When you ask most people what Octavia Butler book they’ve read, this is the one they mention the most. While it was a good book, it’s my opinion that it was not the best of her work. Certainly, everyone has…
