The term “mindset” is getting used a lot these days. And many writing books start with the advice to keep it foremost in your mind that YOU ARE A WRITER.
In her now classic Harvard commencement speech, J.K. Rowling discusses living in poverty and how she wrote on her lunch break and at cafes. She explains that she had wanted to pursue writing much earlier, but that her parents wanted her to have a safer vocation.
This is how she described herself as a young woman: “I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels.”
She took a day job, but she never stopped writing. Her amazing journey so clearly illustrates that she had a defined vision of herself as a storyteller.
Despite the mundane realities of her life with a dayjob and being an impoverished single parent, she lived a richly different life in her mind. In her mind, she created stories. When I toured the Harry Potter movie studios in London last fall, the tour guide shared that J.K. Rowling had often expressed to them that she had seen her own books as movies in her head. To me, that is further indication that her visualization of creating stories was so clear, that it didn’t stop at books alone but that her stories were movies that she merely captured into books first.
Though her commencement speech doesn’t mention it, she was rejected 10 times when she submitted the first Harry Potter.
Mindset Lessons ==> When you are a storyteller, it doesn’t matter what else you do to earn a living. When others reject you, stay the course. Keep writing.
Shonda Rhimes
One of the most amazing books I “read” last year (she narrated her autobiography on Audible.com) was The Year of Yes. Much like J.K. Rowling, Ms. Rhimes knew from an early age that she was meant to be a storyteller. She sat in the family pantry and made up worlds with the canned goods.
Just think, what if she had quit in the first decade? She started at an Ivy League school, she could have had better paying jobs elsewhere. But she stayed in Hollywood. Her mindset was that she was meant to tell stories that would be seen on the screen.
Her production company is named ShondaLand. I love that. It speaks so clearly about how she had this world inside her and she saw this even though she did not reach commercial success for a decade.
When speaking of the commercially unsuccessful Princess Diaries 2, she said she treasured the opportunity to work with Julie Andrews.
Mindset lesson ==> Build relationships. She spent a decade in Hollywood, making relationships, improving her craft, and building her network.
Elizabeth Gilbert
Her 2006 memoir, Eat, Pray, Love stayed on the NYT bestseller list for 199 weeks and became a movie.
But she graduated from NYU in 1991, fifteen years earlier and spent that time steadily plugging away at her writing with no big hits or commercial success. She had day jobs as a cook, bartender, and waitress.
She talks about these jobs in her wonderful book, Big Magic. She said she used her day job to soak up stories and dialogue from the patrons. And she continued to write and submit, often getting rejected.
Just like J.K. Rowling and Shonda Rhimes, she continued to work steadily, always writing no matter what else she did to pay the bills.
Mindset lesson ==> Stories are all around you. Use them in your work even as you do other work.
Thanks for summarizing the hard work these women put into their craft even before they experienced success. I needed to be reminded that it usually takes a lot of effort and persistence to fulfill my dreams of writing.
Thanks for this excellent post. I am currently taking Gilbert’s creativity course and she discusses her book and how she has had different jobs, but kept writing, and I agree with your premise. We must keep writing for the love of writing. Most people who are successful took many years to become successful, or to become known, and some were not known until after they had long died. I think our culture causes us to have a “fast food” mindset, but that’s not how life really is. It is so encouraging to hear stories like J.K. Rowlings, too. I always say, there are no,head hunters for poets, like there are for sports or high tech, lol. I also think I am too hard on myself, because I write despite hardships and no time, and now that I am no longer in an abusive marriage, I have my freedom.
Yes, the myth of the “overnight success” is often destroyed when you dig down deep to how people laid their foundations for success! Keep writing.