There are many natural athletes with innate talents whose sports careers collapse. The skilled, mature and successful athletes are those who have learned that complete reliance on those strengths is the path to failure. While an overwhelming fast ball can be a formidable pitch. if this is the only pitch in the pitcher’s repertoire, then the opposing team adapts to it, eventually defeating him. By perfecting the curve ball, the pitcher converts himself from a good pitcher to a masterful one.
They have instead adopted the philosophy that success requires not just their talents but also their willingness to convert their weaknesses into strengths.
Thus, the basketball player who is a superb right handed dribbler learns to become even more adept at handling the ball with her left hand. The baseball star who is a skilled hitter also develops superior base running skills.
Developing these new skills is difficult and humbling. Working on a weakness requires the skilled athlete to work as hard as, and to appear as clumsy as, the unskilled player. This can be an ego-bruising experience. However, converting weaknesses to strengths expands the dimension of the athlete’s performance. In order to succeed, you have to confront the weaknesses that you fear and convert them to strengths.
If you love the creative process, but hate editing, devote yourself to becoming a superb editor. Don’t like cover design? Get competent at it. Hate copyediting? Invest expertise in this area. Don’t really like devoting precious time to character development? commit yourself to a month of doing nothing but developing your characters.
Get used to doing what you don’t feel like doing in order to be the novelist that you want to become.
Strength and Weaknesses. It’s difficult to pick up the right new skills without knowing your true strengths and weaknesses. Begin by using your character sabbatica in an evaluation of these.
Interview yourself. What do you enjoy about your writing? Why? Which tasks do you recognize as necessary but nevertheless try to shun? Why? Ask probing questions, increasing the depth until you get answers.
As you take stock of yourself and review your development, you’ll inevitably turn to your most recent experience. That may be at a previous job, or graduate school life. For you, as for everyone, a candid self-appraisal will reveal both triumphs and failures. Examine both, but avoid the easy path of assuming that past victories alone determine your career future. Past failure can also be a wonderful trainer, although it certainly doesn’t feel wonderful at the time. Defeats commonly lay the foundation for future victories. Alternatively, previous victories can set the stage for future failure.
Consider the story of West Virginia. While the entire state of Virginia moved with the other twelve colonies to become an original member of the new United States of America, the birth of West Virginia was violent and disruptive. At the inception of the Civil War in 1861, many states plunged into internal turmoil as they considered seceding from the Union. The secession of Virginia, while actively supported by many of its citizens, was resisted by a collection of the state’s western counties. Since the North saw political and tactical advantage in gaining control of western Virginia, and the South saw equally clear advantage in retaining all of Virginia for its cause, both sides sent armed forces to the western sectors of this state to seize these counties. By doing so they hoped to gain control of the local political apparatus and, subsequently, claim that part of the state for their cause.
These armies were commanded by the finest promising soldiers of each side [[i]]. The Union forces were skillfully controlled by a rising young officer. This officer demonstrated a good strategic sense of the importance of the overall struggle. He developed a unity of command that permitted him to coordinate the military operations in all areas. His reluctance to convert a small victory into a larger battle won him praise, and he was received by laudatory audiences in Washington DC at the conclusion of his victorious campaign. This Union victory in West Virginia that led to the emergence of West Virginia as a free state was one of the few Federal triumphs in 1861.
On the other hand, the defeat of the confederates left their commander’s reputation at low ebb. His offensive plans were too complex, and his thinking had been overly focused on small details and not on a grand strategy. In addition, he was unable to broker peace between argumentative officers, failing to assert himself as a leader of generals.
The future fates of the commanding generals of either side were the reverse of what one might anticipate. George B. McClellan, the triumphant Union general, was widely acclaimed as the young Napoleon that the North needed. Flush with his victory in West Virginia, he was rapidly promoted, and immediately returned to his strategy of training capable armies but holding them back from the battle. He understandably hoped that this strategy that had produced a victory in West Virginia would yield additional fruit. Instead the habits and tendencies that served him well so in West Virginia contributed to future spectacular defeats and political intrigues. Less than two years after his victories in West Virginia, he was removed from command by a thoroughly exasperated President Abraham Lincoln.
The defeated Confederate general carefully examined his loss in West Virginia, choosing to be instructed by his poor reactions to the difficulties that beset him there. Remembering how an army that is trained for combat can be demoralized when the order to advance never comes, he developed an aggressive, fighting instinct. Examining the failure of his offensives led him to become an excellent defensive strategist. Finally his affection for his soldiers, coupled with a new willingness to intercede between querulous officers produced in him the combination of compassion and fighting spirit that made him one of the most beloved generals in US history ─ Robert E. Lee.
The early experience for both men was a formative one. Lee was strengthened by learning the right lessons from his defeat, while McClelland was defeated by learning the wrong lessons from his victory.
Things are complicated, and the lessons that we first learn from our experiences are ultimately not the important ones. Life is magnificent that way, being forgiving with our mistakes. It is a patient companion as we struggle to make things right. The dynamic is unpredictable and confusing. Character sabbatica give us the time not to straighten crooked paths but to learn from the curves.
[i]. Newell C.R. (1996). Lee vs. McClellan: The First Campaign. Washington D.C. Regnery Publishing Inc.