One of the most common reasons writers stop writing is that they begin to view themselves as failures. Maybe they haven’t sold anything for a while. Maybe they’ve never sold anything. But the ones who keep writing—no matter what—look back one day and realize they are writers. They realize that the very kinds of pain that tempted them to quit have added texture and color to everything they write.

Trust your personal plot twists

My parents gave me a subscription to Sports Illustrated when I was in elementary school, and I’ve read it religiously for decades. You’ll find in S.I. some of the best writing published today. I couldn’t have asked for better instructors.

After a football injury I started covering high school sports for a local newspaper. This was even before I was old enough to drive, so my parents had to cart me to the games, then to the newspaper office, where they waited for me in the parking lot as I fashioned my stories for a dollar per printed inch of copy.

Almost immediately I realized I’d found my niche. While my early articles were painfully amateurish, I had a certain flair for sports writing because of all my reading and my passion for sports.

I healed in time for baseball season, and I eagerly returned to what I considered the center of my life. Then I injured my knee — before the advent of reconstructive surgery. Any future I might have had in baseball was gone. But God had a better idea, as He always does.

‘Never, never, never give up’

You’ll need to channel Winston Churchill’s famous quote often if you want to be a write.

That second injury shook my life back into balance. I was a Christian but had put baseball far ahead of my faith. Now I understand that I had to forfeit the game I loved to put God back in His proper place in my life.

Still, that shattered dream caused deep pain. Setting my sights on a career in sports writing assuaged some of the loss. Multiple decades and a whole bunch of books later (many of them on sports), my aim is to teach others to write.

I’m glad you landed on this site and that you care about all that goes into improving your craft. I can’t tell you the twists and turns of your journey will be any easier than mine, but I can tell you, they could prove just as rewarding.

What’s been the biggest challenge or plot twist in your life, and how can you use it in your writing?

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