Weekday Wisdom, Episode 105
An Interview with Joan Gelfan, Part 4
Commitment is essential to completing a project. You need the commitment to not only finish the project but to do the follow-up, as well.
Carma Spence: The next “C” is Commitment. Now that seems obvious to me but what’s your take on commitment?
Joan Gelfand: First there’s the finishing the product, the getting it from point A to Point B. I talk a lot about passion, because if you don’t feel passionate about your project, you’re not going to get it from point A to Point B. So, of course, the first thing is finishing.
The next thing is when you put it out there, what is your line in the sand about how much work you will do to get the book out there?
I have a writer friend that said until something is rejected 100 times, I don’t consider it dead. And I know people, and there are anecdotes like this in the book, who submitted their manuscripts to a hundred literary agents and ended up on the New York Times bestseller list. But you can’t do that for something that you don’t feel invested in.
CS: Exactly. Exactly. There’s got to be a big why. Sometimes that why is really obvious. And sometimes you have to dig for it.
JG: Absolutely. And commitment … especially these days. Think of how we are getting more and more used to immediate gratification. Everything now. I know a lot of people come to me and say, “I tried. I sent this out like five times.” And I say, “OK. Let’s talk about that.”
In next week’s episode, we’ll talk about what the third “C,” Community, means.
In the meantime, I hope you got some value out of today’s video. If you did give it a thumbs up on YouTube or write a comment below. Or do both!
I want the Weekday Wisdom to be something that you value. And, remember this:
Think outside the box.
Spread your wings and fly.
Because you — yes, you right there — are capable of more than you know.
And that may even include more commitment than you realize.
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