Bruce’s secret tips for writing success
Okay, that was clickbait. There is no substitute for quality and perseverance.
This collection of political yard signs is quite useless, but sometimes yard signs are actually effective. Read this post for one example.
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. —Galatians 6:9
In 1990, I agreed to serve as press secretary for a political campaign. The candidate, Rick Santorum, was running for US Congress against an incumbent who had won 63 percent of the vote in three straight elections. Thus, no one thought Santorum had much hope and few people paid attention to his campaign.
Santorum was desperate to get attention. He could think fast and I could type fast. So whenever some new issue arose, he would tell me what to say, and within an hour I was sending a press release or policy statement to all the local newspapers and radio stations.
However, the local media ignored nearly everything we sent them, because nobody cared about the opinions of a first-time candidate who was going to lose anyway.
In the course of a nine-month campaign, we did that exercise 50 times. A national consultant from our political party told us that we had the most active media office of any campaign in the country. I joked that I was setting records for writing the most press releases nobody read and holding the most press conferences nobody attended.
Meanwhile, Santorum campaigned tirelessly across the district. Three weeks before the election, yard signs with his name appeared in front yards of homes all over the area. As the media started reporting on what now seemed to be a close race, they described Santorum as a challenger with well-developed views on the issues. No media source depicted him as uninformed. They couldn’t—not after those 50 professional-quality press releases we had sent them.
That experience taught me the value of doing persistent, high-quality work even when it may seem that nobody cares, because it usually pays off later. (In this case, Santorum won the election and I got a job for the next four years.)
Writing this blog has been a similar experience, except that the media recognition has come a little faster. I have tried to produce interesting posts with quality and consistency, at least twice a week. Sometimes, relative to the big-time influencers in the social media landscape, I feel rather inconsequential. But then I get special encouragement from people who appreciate what I’m doing.
Many readers have made positive comments or sent me personal notes of thanks. Moreover, Joel Forster of Evangelical Focus, Jay Mātenga of Christian Daily, and Brian Stiller of the World Evangelical Alliance have republished many of my posts. We should be willing to write whatever God calls us to write even if just one person will read it, but these friends’ republication of my work has reinforced my sense of its usefulness.
I’ve also created a useful platform for some guest post contributors. Léo Lehmann, the Belgian pastor who I featured in my August 25 post on why some Belgian evangelicals were not excited about Franklin Graham’s visit to their country, shared with me a long list of locations where that post has been quoted or republished—in multiple languages—and said he has even become a source for secular Belgian media.
It is easy to become weary in doing good. Fatigue and discouragement can cause people to lose their commitment to doing the best possible work, every time. But every action you take, even if noticed by relatively few people, builds up or dismantles your reputation. For a Christian, every task should be done as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23), even if no one else is watching.