Ultimate Sportsfan and I have been teaching an adult Sunday school class for the last few weeks. We’re teaching from this book called If You Want to Walk on Water, You Have to Get Out of the Boat. Basically, the book is about getting past fears and stepping out of your comfort zone to achieve what you want in life.

Sunday we taught about resiliency, which is the ability to come back from or adapt to adversity. I think more than in most professions, writers have to be resilient. Not only do we receive rejections from agents and editors as we start out, once we publish, we receive rejections in the form of bad reviews. Sometimes a book doesn’t do as well as we would have hoped, either. But if we’re going to be successful, we have to keep the faith and keep writing.

One of the discussions we had in class was about how we react to obstacles. Since I was leading the class, I knew I had better come up with my answer in case no one else volunteered. I think the way I react to obstacles in my writing is pretty much how I react to them in life. My first response is always to give up. If my critique partners tell me something major isn’t working, and I can see that it’s going to be really hard to go back and make it work, my first reaction is to say, “Well, I can’t write this book. I might as well just toss it and give up.”

Fortunately, that’s not my last response (or I wouldn’t have any books written). After I give up for an hour or a few days (or once—a week), I decide I am going to make it work no matter what. And then I push through, doing whatever is necessary to make that book work. At times this has meant a complete rewrite. Sometimes a complete rewrite more than once. I certainly don’t claim to be as resilient as someone like a POW, but it’s nice to know I’m not a complete quitter.

What about you? What do you do when you face a great obstacle? How do you push through? I think we could all use some advice and strategies for when the tough times come.