Persistence…

“PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision.”

Sometimes I’ll spend a half-hour or so browsing through the Go Into The Story archives (you can access them here). After all, with 30K+ plus articles spanning nearly fifteen years, there’s a LOT of content on the site. Believe it or not, there are times when I stumble on an article and have little or even no recollection of having written the post.

In this particular case, I didn’t do the writing, rather it’s an inspirational letter penned by a Pixar animator Austin Madison which made the rounds back in 2011. Its message is as relevant today as it was then.

PIXAR
May 17, 2011

To Whom it May Inspire,

I, like many of you artists out there, constantly shift between two states. The first (and far more preferable of the two) is white-hot, “in the zone” seat-of-the-pants, firing on all cylinders creative mode. This is when you lay your pen down and the ideas pour out like wine from a royal chalice! This happens about 3% of the time.

The other 97% of the time I am in the frustrated, struggling, office-corner-full-of-crumpled-up-paper mode. The important thing is to slog diligently through this quagmire of discouragement and despair. Put on some audio commentary and listen to the stories of professionals who have been making films for decades going through the same slings and arrows of outrageous production problems.

In a word: PERSIST.

PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision. Remember what Peter Jackson said, “Pain is temporary. Film is forever.” And he of all people should know.

So next time you hit writer’s block, or your computer crashes and you lose an entire night’s work because you didn’t hit save (always hit save), just remember: you’re never far from that next burst of divine creativity. Work through that 97% of murky abysmal mediocrity to get to that 3% which everyone will remember you for!

I guarantee you, the art will be well worth the work!

Your friend and mine,

Austin Madison

“ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!”

A few writing quotes to reinforce Austin’s point:

Paddy Chayefsky: “If I have anything to say to young writers, it’s stop thinking of writing as art. Think of it as work.”

R.A. Salvatore: “If you can quit, then quit. If you can’t quit, you’re a writer.”

Kevin Ashton: “Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance… The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don’t do is quit.”

Richard Bach: “A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”

Here’s a video featuring Austin Madison in which he talks about being a story artist. Here are some of his thoughts on how to tell a good story:

The big element of the story structure is conflict and resolution. The best way to write a good story is to come up with a great character and a character that you identify with, then just think about: What would that character want? What would their best dream be? And then just think what would their worst nightmare be and put that in between them and their dream.

The important thing is that it’s clear to the audience who the character is, what they want, and why they feel that way. I think when people say that a movie’s a roller coaster, that is one of the best compliments you can get. You know there’s a lot of dips and rises, but you want your biggest fall to be at the very end of the movie. It’s not just a physical roller coaster, it’s an emotional roller coaster.”

Great advice on two fronts: Persistence. And some keys to good storytelling.

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Persistence… was originally published in Go Into The Story on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.