What if your breakthrough is on the other side of your next failure?
What if your breakthrough is on the other side of your next failure?
Wherein golf pro Max Homa helps you become a better writer
🙋♂️ Welcome, writer!
I’m Blake Atwood, a nonfiction editor, author, and ghostwriter. My literary claim to nominal fame is as an early developmental editor on Atomic Habits, but I’ve worked on more than 60 books, including a few of my own.
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On to the tips (golf pun fully intended).
What if your breakthrough is on the other side of your next failure?
Max Homa is a six-time winner on the PGA Tour. I became an instant fan after watching this episode of Strapped.
So when the PGA featured him in “How Max Homa Uses Data to Win,” I was an easy sell.
But I didn’t expect to learn so many writing lessons from a golf pro.
Writing is hard
First, he’s honest with his struggles, and this quote could easily be applied to our writing lives:
Golf’s hard. Everything’s hard. I could go do something great one week and the very next week feel like I’ve never swung a club, then the week after feel great again. And if I looked at each of those in just a vacuum, I would lose my mind.
Writing tip: Don’t allow recent failures or rejections to unnecessarily cloud your mind. When you write your shi**y first draft, consider it fertilizer for future growth.
Writing requires perseverance
Max also shares a quote that has helped him navigate the highs and lows of professional golf. When I heard it, I thought, “Isn’t that from Atomic Habits?”
It is, but it isn’t.
James Clear was quoting Jacob Riis, a Danish-American social reformer and journalist. And Homa first heard the quote from an idol of his, Kobe Bryant, who’d previously heard it from Greg Popovich (arguably one of the best NBA coaches of all time).
The quote, now that I’ve built up enough suspense (or annoyance) is:
When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
Writing tip: The ideal and expected writing tip is to write every day. You’ll get to that 101st stone-splitting moment much faster, but I have to imagine that so many of us have been broken upon that very stone as the responsibilities, emergencies, and unknowns of life arrive like a thief to steal our time, our momentum, and even our joy in the process.
So what if you can’t write every day or on a consistent schedule?
I love this advice from Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal: “Think every day about the things that you want to write, and when you have time to get to your desk, honor your intentions.”
Also: “Pick one day somewhere in your schedule where everything can go to hell except your writing, and write the hell out of that day.”
Writing demands patience
As I write this, I’ve just returned from a golf lesson. I feel incrementally better about my swing, but I also know that I wasn’t living up to the coach’s expectations. I just couldn’t get my body to do what he was suggesting despite my best efforts.
I feel deflated.
But this game has made me feel that way before. I’ve legitimately thought about quitting a few times.
Yet, I know that the next time I’m at the range or on the course and I pure a shot and “that tuning fork rings in my loins,” I’ll feel as if the PGA (or at least LIV) will contact me ASAP.
To bring it back to Homa, he was a successful collegiate golfer at UC Berkeley. However, “Homa describes the arc of his career like a Magic Mountain roller-coaster ride: some early ups and then some significant downs.” After getting on the tour, he lost his PGA playing privileges (his card, as it’s known) due to poor performance—twice.
He’d lost his card. He’d lost his swing. He’d lost his mojo. But he pummeled ball after ball into the Friday afternoon sky, searching anyway. Eventually, he found it.
I’m a Homa fan for many reasons, but his determination not to quit is a central reason why.
Writing tip: What if you approached your writing by asking yourself the question that launched this article: What if my breakthrough is on the other side of my next failure?
I’m not suggesting that your work-in-progress will be a failure. Rather, I’m speaking to those of you (like me) who tend to place too much weight on the present work to the detriment of your canon of work.
Strike that stone. Make a dent. Chisel it bit by bit.
Eventually, you’ll break through.
💻 For your consideration
👉️ Courtney Maum, whom I quoted earlier and runs a Substack titled the same as her book, is doing something very creative and amazing and helpful for nonfiction authors titled “The Savannah Project.” I don’t want to spoil it so you’ll just have to read this.
👉️ Jane Friedman is hosting a paid webinar via Writer’s Digest University titled “Will Your Nonfiction Book Sell? How to Evaluate the Strength of Your Project” on Aug. 17. I hope to attend. I believe it will be invaluable information for nonfiction authors seeking trad publishing.
👉️ Jeremy Caplan writes the Wonder Tools Substack newsletter and recently published “How to be an email ninja.” If you want to write more and email less, use these tips.
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