There's a thin line between persistence and stubbornness. I've spent most of my life on the wrong side of it — and I wouldn't change a thing.
When I was young, growing up in rural Tennessee, stubbornness wasn't a virtue. It was a problem. Teachers called it defiance. Parents called it difficult. The world had a very clear idea of what you were supposed to do, how you were supposed to do it, and when you were supposed to stop asking why.
I never stopped asking why.
The Writing Parallel
Writing a novel — especially a fantasy novel, especially a first fantasy novel — is an act of pure stubbornness. Every day, the rational part of your brain tells you to stop. The statistics are against you. The market doesn't care. The odds of anyone reading your work, let alone being moved by it, are vanishingly small.
And yet you write. You write because the story is there, burning a hole in your chest, demanding to be told. You write because the characters feel more real than most of the people you pass on the street. You write because somewhere, deep down, you believe that stories matter — that they change people, that they build bridges between minds, that they are the closest thing we have to shared dreams.
That belief is stubbornness. And it's the most valuable thing I own.
The Gift of Not Giving Up
Cael doesn't give up. That's one of the first things I knew about him, long before I knew his name or his story. He's stubborn in the way that only someone who's been underestimated can be. He doesn't have the luxury of talent or privilege or certainty. All he has is the refusal to stop walking.
I wrote him that way because I understand that kind of stubbornness. It's not glamorous. It's not heroic in the way movies make heroism look. It's just the quiet, daily decision to keep going when everything reasonable says you should stop.
If you're reading this and you're working on something that feels impossible — a book, a business, a dream that nobody else believes in — I want you to know that stubbornness is not a flaw. It's a superpower.
Keep going.