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Health & Fitness

Road to Publication: Go Out on a Limb--Until You Fall!

Is it terrible I don’t know who Tyler Perry is?

He was on the cover of last Sunday’s USA Weekend, and though I didn’t read the article (so still don’t know who he is), a quote by him caught my eye. He was asked how he dealt with criticism, and this seemed to fit in with my blog last week, Handling Rejection.

“I try and find truth inside of it,” Perry said. “There’s a lot…I don’t pay attention to; it is white noise. But then there’s some [with] a little bit of truth, and if I can find a nugget of truth…I think, ‘Oh, that makes sense.’”

I love that: find a nugget of truth. It’s true, not all criticism will be valuable to you. But what a positive spin on receiving and being open to criticism.

Another quote I took note of this past week comes from Laurence Olivier via Anthony Hopkins via Inside the Actors Studio (a fabulous show, by the way, on Bravo). And Hopkins, well, I could have listened to him for a few hours. If you have a free 45 minutes sometime, check out the YouTube recording of his interview.

Back to Olivier’s quote. The show’s host, James Lipton, mentioned that Hopkins worked with Olivier when “he [Olivier] was at the peak of his powers” and asked Hopkins about Olivier’s advice on taking a risk.

“Always risk,” Hopkins quoted Olivier as saying. “Go out on the edge of the limb of the tree. Go out even farther until you fall.”

I’ve heard the “limb of the tree” quote from others, but never the last part about falling. That really made me stop and think about true risk taking in the arts, whether it’s acting, or writing, or painting, or sculpting. You have to be willing to take that fall. If you don’t ever fall, then you aren’t giving yourself fully to your art. You aren’t stretching yourself. You aren’t working hard enough.

Rejection is part of the game. Falling is part of the game. But after the fall, or the second or third or fourth one, I’ll bet you’ll find new strength in your writing. Because the risk you took will be part of your work. Maybe not all of it. Maybe just a tiny part. But it will be there, a piece of you, and that piece is what will make your story unique.

Don’t be afraid to fall. Don’t be afraid of criticism. You just might find that little nugget of truth that pushes you into taking your story to the next level.

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