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Persisting through Crappy Writing
Advice from the late Octavia Butler.
Octavia Butler would’ve celebrated her 75th birthday on Wednesday, June 22, 2022 if she were still alive.
The literary world lost an amazing writer and author when she made her transition on February 24, 2006. There will never be another like her in this lifetime.
Today, I came across an article that appeared under my Facebook Memories section I initially shared five years ago. It listed several quotes from her literary works including Parable of the Sower, Adulthood Rites, and her last novel Fledgling. The one that personally touched me was from the anthology Bloodchild: And Other Stories:
“You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence. It’s just so easy to give up.”
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve had my moments where I felt my writing was crappy, including poetry, short stories, and Medium articles. Sometimes I shake my head and ask myself “What the hell was I thinking?” after reading some of my older works. There have been moments when I felt like quitting altogether after struggling to learn grammatical rules like writing in past versus present tense or…