Be consistent. Have patience. Persist.

You find that the world loves talent, but pays off on character.
- John Gardner

This chapter is the longest in the book because it is the most important. Persistence, grit, determination are way more important than talent in living a creative life on your own terms. Some successful artists may argue that what matters is that you love the subject, love the materials, and thus pour your heart into the work. Yes, that too. That love is what enables you to persist, to stick with your art through thick and thin.

The path of diving down, deep inside, finding your uniqueness, your internal beauty, and then mastering it, and offering it to the world, is not the easy path. It is not the secure path. You will experience disappointments, rejection, setbacks. You have to know that, and expect that, as you start out. You do it in pursuit of the deep satisfaction that can ultimately be found there. Anything worthwhile, anything unique, will take time to be accepted. First you show commitment. Then the market shows commitment. That’s just how it goes.

In the twenty plus years that I’ve published Heron Dance in its various print and online forms, one of the hard lessons I’ve learned is not to expect consistent results, consistent revenue. It has been more like feast and famine, famine and feast. Overall, the money needed to stick with it at least one more day has always shown up, but there have been many days when it was not at all certain that it would. I’ve encountered a lot of rejection, and indifference. And I’ve encountered a lot of people who have told me that Heron Dance has changed their lives for the better. Thousands, in fact. But first I wandered in the wilderness for five years.

I learned that sticking with the work is made easier when I’ve said to myself, “It isn’t the market’s or subscribers’ job to be consistent. It’s mine. Control what you can — your own output. From there, let the chips fall where they may.” Your faith in yourself, your work, especially initially, needs to be greater than the inertia, the indifference, of the world.

I lose my confidence sometimes, and that's where the courage part comes in.  I'm only halfway self-confident. . . If you have determination, you're going to use that determination to take the place of confidence.
      I was always willing to undergo hardship or whatever it took to be able to stay with my work.  I could have quit many times — given up, because it is no great art in life to be poor and hungry, and that's what I was.
     - Erskine Caldwell, novelist, author of Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre, as well as a number of other books. Despite rejection and even scorn early in his writing career, his books ultimately went on to sell tens of millions of copies.

Study.  Inch along.  Pile up ‘goodness' until you are so good everybody can see it and not ignore you.
      - Helen Gurley Brown

Find that undertaking, that occupation,  with which you have infinite patience. Find that undertaking that you are willing to stick with through rejection and indifference. If you have not yet found that, use the journaling and other self-discovery methods explored in this book to consider possibilities. Don’t just select something randomly and hope for the best. Your heart and soul needs to be invested in the work. Your work needs to be based on who you are, on what makes you unique as an individual.

I love to walk in the woods, and since I live in New England half of the year, I frequently encounter stone walls deep in the woods, some of them miles long. A hundred or two hundred years ago, families spent years building those fences. It was backbreaking work. The land is hilly, rocky, heavily treed and only marginally suitable to livestock grazing. Ultimately, large numbers of these farmers moved west but thousands must of lived lives of poverty and early death trying to eke out a living. It is important that you not only persist, but persist at the right endeavor.

When I started Heron Dance, I had no experience managing people. As it grew, I needed help. I discovered, over a period of years, that I had no talent for hiring the right people, or managing people. I hired way too quickly. Perhaps, if I’m honest with myself, I wanted to get back to art and writing and didn’t want to interview twenty people. And when people inevitably failed — whether it was fail to show up on Monday morning or failed to put their heart into their work, I lost patience way too quickly. As you can imagine, this approach didn’t work. Perhaps worse, the publishing industry was undergoing major change in terms of online content and self-publishing. I didn’t notice those changes because I was deep into dealing with people problems. I got into a negative spiral of frustration and discouragement. Had I kept my perspective and positive mental outlook, I would have noticed that the changes in everything from YouTube to print-on-demand to Amazon meant that I didn’t need staff to pack and ship books, answer the phone, do graphic design, etc. Heron Dance could have easily survived based on what I can do — art and writing.

The specifics outlined above are personal to me, and probably don’t apply to you. You may be a great people manager. I know people who are. My dad was. It is an art all its own. My point is just that your area of focus, what you persist at, needs to be based on a realistic assessment of your skills, and on how you can make a unique contribution to other people in a quality way.

Below, excerpts from books that I turn to help me through the rough times.

“Renoir brings us bread from his own home or we should die of hunger,” Monet wrote to Bazille in the summer of 1869. “For a week now we have been without bread, without fuel to cook by, and without light.” But at least they were actually painting the pictures that would eventually bring them to public notice, and they were convinced that the time would come when, as Cézanne told Zola, “a bunch of carrots truthfully and powerfully painted would create a revolution in art.”

Among the major artists of the generation born around 1840 — Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Sisley, Redon — only Rodin was still wholly unexhibited by 1870 and had produced virtually none of his important work. The others had a history; Rodin remained shrouded in obscurity. Even Redon, the most reclusive artist of this generation, had exhibited prints in the Salon of 1867.

When Fantin-Latour, in 1869, painted his group portrait of the young innovators of French painting, he included Manet, Zola, Renoir, Monet — people whose stars were clearly rising. Rodin, meanwhile, was busy putting the finishing touches on Carrier’s confections for the fabricants de bronze. Had he been killed in the Franco-Prussian War — as were Bazille, Regnault and several other artists — he would have been merely one of the innumerable forgotten sculptors of the century.
- Frederic Grunfeld, from Rodin, A Biography.

I often think of this next one, particularly, I tell myself, “Everything depends on those who go on anyway.”

Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.
      - Robert Henri, from The Art Spirit

In a very Taoist statement, Ruskin describes the power of patience. Taoism, that spirituality or religion or whatever it is — and whatever it is can’t be put into words — tells us that simplicity, patience and compassion are the three principles that matter.

On the whole, it is patience which makes the final difference between those who succeed or fail in all things. All the greatest people have it in an infinite degree, and among the less, the patient weak ones always conquer the impatient strong.
      - John Ruskin

  

To lose patience is to lose the battle. 
- Mahatma Gandhi

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. 
      - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

 

I will not be distracted by noise, chatter, or setbacks. Patience, commitment, grace, and purpose will guide me. 
     - Louise Hay

 

Knowing trees, I understand the meaning of patience. Knowing grass, I can appreciate persistence.
      - Hal Borland

 

Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one's thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world. 
       - Goethe

 

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
-   Harriet Beecher Stowe

 Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow that talent to the dark place where it leads.
- Erica Jong

I follow closely the work of half a dozen artists, and among those I most respect is Barry Moser, best known perhaps for the dozens of children’s books he’s illustrated, both in watercolor and woodcut. Moser’s collection of essays entitled In the Face of Presumption explores the role of talent in a creative life.

It is a fact that no one ever made a wood engraving or wrote a sestina by merely being creative. That’s like a tail wagging a dog, for God’s sake. Rather than teaching kids to be creative they should be taught what art really is. They should be taught the history of its practitioners, and a good deal about the role craftsmanship plays in the process. They should be taught form, not finger paints. They should be taught that art, contrary to the conventional wisdom, is not self-indulgent. They should be taught that art does not come to those who wait. They should be taught that art comes from those who do — that the very genius of art lies in action. In doing. They should be taught that art comes from study and from hard work and from solid craftsmanship, they should know that beyond determination and persistence, art comes about only through study, work, and knowledge of their craft.

I taught school for twenty-five years. I have no record of how many students I taught over all those years, but it has to be in the tens of hundreds. Based on that experience I can say honestly that I never met a student who was not creative, nor did I ever meet one who was not talented.  I can count on one hand and still have fingers left over the ones who manifest the necessary persistence, determination, drive, desire, patience, and indefatigable energy, and the willingness to fail to make it as an artist. Why them and not the others, if, as I say, all of them were creative and talented?

The answer is simple: some of my students persisted and some did not. Those who did persist persisted because they had energy, they had courage (or sand as my granddaddy would have put it), and they developed a need to work.

Moser’s three rules for the so-called creative life, are, therefore,

Persistence
Indefatigable energy.
The habit of work.

As I tell my students, persistence is really what this business is all about. It has little to do with talent. Talent’s about as valuable as tits on a boar.
      - In the Face of Presumption, Essays, Speeches & Incidental Writings by Barry Moser (edited).

 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt

Permanence, perseverance and persistence in spite of all obstacles, discouragement, and impossibilities: It is this, that in all things distinguishes the strong soul from the weak.
      - Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), historian, essayist, satirist.

Have patience with all things but first of all with yourself. 
- Francis de Sales

Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy. 
      - Saadi

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.
- Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn

Socrates demonstrated long ago that the only truly free individual is free to the extent of his self-mastery. Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
- Steven Pressfield from The War of Art

Move through life in harmony with the flow
Wait, wait for the point of leverage
Wait until small action is capable of producing profound results
In harmony with the flow, use the flow
Connect your power with that of the Great Flow of Life
Waiting requires humility.
     - Roderick MacIver

The following excerpts are from my interview of Fritz Hull, co-founder of the Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island, with his wife Vivian. Whidbey Island is a satellite island off Seattle. We were talking about the challenges of sticking with your calling during the tough times:

There is the sacrifice, but there is also the call. The call is not general, but it is a call to me, to my life. It is a graceful and yet demanding call. That is the harsh demand of it, and at the same time the promise that we are going to be okay. Grace.

Staying with our bliss, our calling, over the long haul has in fact brought me and Vivian our happiness. And that means staying with it in times of unhappiness. Riding out the storms, the times of bewilderment, and hanging on and staying with it. Coming through those periods there is a confirmation, and that inner confirmation brings the happiness that makes it all feel worthwhile.

When you stay with it and move through the seasons, you learn spring follows winter. It will happen. And it will probably happen in a way that you will have forgotten how beautiful it is. It is happening right now in these woods. We need to allow things the time to come into their own. To their moment of flowering, of opportunity, and to be there and intersect that opportunity, to be taken and lifted by that opportunity onto the next one, which will then include the next dark time. Probably. No doubt. There will be more bewilderment.

It requires a surrender to the call. And the call is both graceful and demanding. It requires  wholeheartedness. That is the key. It is the opposite of an energy leakage, of things drifting off or being bleached away or being stolen from you. Energy leakage is the opposite of wholeheartedness. It is whatever drags me down and sideways and steals my energy. It steals my devotion. Devotion is wholeheartedness.

There is a great line from Annie Dillard which I love. She says, “The thing is to stalk your calling in certain skilled and supple way. To locate the most tender and live spot, and plug into that pulse.” Isn’t that great? It is from the story of the weasel.

To me it comes from Spirit. It comes from relationship with the mystery. What makes our heart sing? Where do we find that lilt in our hearts? What makes us crotchety? What nourishes us? What makes us smile? What makes us thankful?

It is like watching a young person grow up, watching things come into their fullness, watching things come into their time. It is how you nurture processes and individuals and helping bring things into their right time for flowering. If you do it enough times, you learn that spring follows winter. It will happen. And it will happen probably in a way that you will have forgotten how beautiful it is. It is happening right now in these woods. We have had a rough spring.

It is like staying with something and moving through the seasons. It is allowing all the time that is needed for things to come into their own time. To their moment of flowering, of opportunity, and to be there and intersect that opportunity, to be taken and lifted by that opportunity onto the next one, which will then include the next dark time. Probably. No doubt. There will be more bewilderment.
- Fritz Hull, Heron Dance interview, Issue 35

Steven Foster, Meredith Little and The School of Lost Borders 

I interviewed Steven Foster and his wife Meredith in the fall of 1999. When I interviewed him, Steven was struggling with a genetic lung illness. He died May 6, 2003.

I did not know Steven well, but I knew him well enough to know he had a both huge heart and a tendency towards anger. He struggled with those contradictions, and overcame them at least to the extent that he was able to co-create, with Meredith, The School of Lost Borders in Big Pine California. Their work touched people all over the world. Many founded offshoots doing similar work.

Like others I have had the pleasure to meet and get to know a little through Heron Dance, Steven was embodied huge contradictions, mood swings, anger and gentleness, self-absorption, generosity and kindness. Perhaps we all possess those contradictory characteristics, but some of us contain extremes. Perhaps out of the internal friction and grinding comes the energy to overcome the obstacles and discouragement and ultimately contribute something of wide impact and beauty.

Within a few minutes of meeting, Steven asked me to sit with him beside the pond in front of his home. We sat and watched the ducks in the late afternoon. Immediately he launched into a tirade against environmentalists who were working to shut down roads in the wilderness areas he loved. His health no longer permitted him access to some of those areas unassisted. Local people he cared about had grown up hunting and fishing in those areas and had always done so by four wheeler. They didn’t like the changes being imposed by young, middle class, educated environmentalists. I thought a lot about the words of this man with a truly wild heart, a big heart, a lover of quiet and a champion of solitude in wilderness.

Then I think of the beautiful film Lost Borders Kim Shelton made about the work of the school he and Meredith founded. A troubled teenager heads off alone for a three day fast, if memory serves, but gives up after one night alone and walks back into camp. Steven sits and talks with him. The young man expects an argument — or at very least an effort at convincing him to return to his fast. Instead, Steven tells him that he did the right thing. He did what was right for him. After talking some more, and thinking about what Steven said, the young man heads back into the desert to finish his solo.

During our interview, I asked Steven if he felt that when they started Lost Borders (see issue 29) their work was supported by some force of Grace.

Love. Love. Love. (laughs). Love! The love we had for each other. In the beginning, I was a Kelly Girl. I hired myself out to various offices and agencies as a typist. As a secretary. And Meredith cleaned houses. We made just enough to scrape by. And we had love. Every night we had each other. And we would go to bed at night feeling completely defeated, and lie in each other’s arms. In the morning we would get up and be ready to go again. Anxious to go again. That was help. Supernatural help.

When I later interviewed Meredith separately, and asked her the same question, she said: 

Oh yeah. I feel like we have been enormously blessed. Even when we literally didn’t know how we would put bread on the table for our kids, the next day somehow there was always enough. Miraculously enough. In so many ways. The teachers who have come into our life. There is a part at me that doesn’t even want to look back at why it has happened. There is a part of me that feels that this life of ours is co-created with something mysterious and bigger than I understand, and our own incredible flame as individual consciousness. If we fully engage in that partnership, it matches us. Somehow it meets us. That has been such a big part of our work and life.

 Horace Traubel, biographer of Walt Whitman, once asked Whitman:

 Suppose the whole damned thing went up in smoke, Walt, would you consider your life a failure?

Whitman’s response:

Not a bit of it. . . No life is a failure.  I have done the work: I have thrown my life into the work:. . . my single simple life: putting it up for what it was worth: into the book pouring it into the book: honestly, without stint, giving the book all, all, all: why should I call it a failure? Why? Why? I don’t think a man can be so easily wrecked as that.

Whitman didn’t merely think the work, he did it.  He wrote it and rewrote it.  He stuck with it when no one cared.  That is success.  That is triumph. 

It may seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first.
— Miyamoto Musashi

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first.
— Brian Tracy

There are some things you can’t learn from others. You have to pass through the fire.
- Norman Douglas