How Writing is Like Boot Camp

Persistence is the most critical component to success

What in the world does Marine Boot Camp and being a writer have in common you ask?

I have done both and I’ve noticed a strong similarity: persistence is the one absolutely critical trait we must adopt to reach our goals. Perhaps the most important trait.

As a new writer, I feel like I did as a recruit at Boot Camp. I have to make it through thousands of little failures and frustrations without giving up, otherwise I’ll have no chance at becoming what I want to be.

I have to drive on even when the road is dark and hopeless.

Persistence will give me my only clear shot at success.

I’ll tell you a story.

My arms burned. We were all in push-up positions. I’d lost track of how long we’d been that way.

It was Boot Camp, and we were in the squad bay late one evening. Just after we’d finished eating and returned to the barracks, the drill instructor had noticed that someone had left their footlocker unlocked.

Chaos ensued.

We were ordered to remove all 67 locks from every foot locker in the entire squad bay and hold them in front of us. The drill instructor walked by and locked them to each other one by one. (Keep in mind that they all looked exactly the same.) Then we got into push-up position while one by one we each tried the combination on every single lock until we each found the one that was ours.

I can’t remember if we were in push-up position for the whole evening that it took to unlock the mass of locks, but I do remember that doing things like this many times daily was a mind-numbingly frustrating experience (like writing sometimes) that made us feel like quitting. But we had a goal to become Marines, and not quitting was our only way to reach it.

These little cycles of failures, frustrations, then a surmounted obstacle were a common occurrence in Boot Camp and they began to change our attitude. We began to fully accept the things we couldn’t control. Then drive on anyway.

Rejections. Failure. Drive on.

After a few hundred Boot Camp games like this, you realize that any obstacle looks much smaller through the lens of persistence.

I know now as a “boot” writer, I just need to keep going. I need to drive on.

“Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.”- Leonardo da Vinci

As writers, we’ll fail many times. Heck, I may be failing now. Is anyone still here?

It takes courage to write. To put yourself out there. To be judged, then rejected…a lot.

But anyone who has the courage to do things will experience failure. These are noble failures as they are a result of courage.

It’s what you do after each failure that matters. If you persevere and adapt to the situation (improve your writing and keep learning), you WILL overcome that obstacle and be ready for the next.

I only started writing a few months ago, but I’m making small steps daily.

I won’t quit.

You may wish success would come faster, but that’s a rare occurrence and we should diminish that wish. Hoping to hit it big quickly as a new writer is like hoping to win the lottery with every daily one dollar ticket we buy, then being devastated every day when we lose. It makes no sense to look at things like that.

I will lose. You will lose. But here or there, we’ll win a dollar of a new follower or a free ticket to a publication. Most importantly, our craft will improve.

We have to realize the value of accomplishing little improvements at a time. These are the steps to success. We can’t worry about conquering the writing world on day one. We just have to work on little improvements today.

Then do the same tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

We can’t leap up a flight of steps no matter how hard we try, unless we are superman. Taking one step at a time is the surest path upwards for mortals.

That’s how your writing super-heroes started, as mortals.

They started where you are on the rejection path. But they stayed on it. Now they are just a little further down the path than you.

They’ve earned their cape by driving on.

A few months after we’d sorted out our padlocks, we stood outside in the cool breaking sunrise. Our legs felt like jelly, our blistered feet burned, and our bodies were weak. We stood and waited for what we’d been pushing to achieve every day and every night over the past 12 weeks.

When we dropped the heavy packs from our backs, our shoulders felt cool as the sweat that had collected between our packs and our shoulders began to evaporate with the breeze.

We had been hiking all night but now we were still.

We stood at attention with our shoulders back. One by one, the drill instructors stood in front of us, put his hand on our shoulder, and shook our hand.

“Welcome, Marine,” they said as the “Marine’s Hymn” played in the background. Chills shot through our bodies and tears came to our eyes.

We were now Marines and we had only reached our goal by being persistent.

“Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” -Dale Carnegie

So let us agree, fellow writer, that through the pain or failures of honing our craft, that we shall never stop.

Let us write even when the dark clouds of doubt threaten our will.

The sun is always behind these clouds waiting patiently to be seen.

Even if we never reach the high and sunny clouds we dream of, we’ll have given our all to a valiant effort, and that’s something that most will never understand.

Most won’t, but Marines and writers surely will.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” — Calvin Coolidge