My copy of Prism (the newsletter of The British Fantasy Society) arrived this week. I can’t say that I always read it from cover to cover – sometimes I do, and sometimes I don’t. But I always read Mark Morris‘ column, The Mark of Fear. In this issue he opens up his column with what he considers to be the three most important things needed by any aspiring writer:
- A certain amount of talent
- A thick skin
- A vast reservoir of patience (staying power)
Of the three he considers staying power to be the most important. From what I have read in books like Stephen King’s On Writing staying power certainly seems to be a very important thing. I can never quite get the picture out of my mind of Stephen King’s hook full of impaled rejection letters, or his wife pulling his Carrie manuscript out to the bin.
I don’t now how much talent I do or do not have myself, but I think I have a pretty thick skin (man, I’ve had some nasty rejection letters in my time 🙁 ) and I do have a lot of patience (and enough rejections to paper the wall of a small room 🙁 ) so two out of three ain’t bad 🙂