He who digs a pit will fall into it,
And whoever breaks through a wall will be bitten by a serpent.
He who quarries stones may be hurt by them,
And he who splits wood may be endangered by it.
If the axe is dull,
And one does not sharpen the edge,
Then he must use more strength;
But wisdom brings success.
~ Ecclesiastes 10:8-10
In otherwords, anyone can fail or experience difficulties in their chosen field of work, but starting out with understanding and skill increases one’s odds of success.
For years now, I’ve been alternately trying to hone my writing skills and chopping away at my works in progress with a dull axe. In fact, there are a lot of areas in my life where I’ve been working and learning at the same time. It’s frustrating, and I’m not sure how well it works to learn so many different things at once. As a married person, I never worried about making money; we didn’t have a lot but we had enough to get by with just my then-husband’s income. I squandered that time playing around, and now I feel like I’m fighting a battle every day to learn new things, and to learn discipline in my chosen path.
Another way of looking at it is that if I need money now, I should try to use skills I already have to earn it (research, article writing), while sharpening my skills in areas that need work (writing fiction). Instead of panicking because I haven’t finished a novel and my dream of being a published writer seems far away, I should write fiction for enjoyment and to learn, and try to make ends meet with non-fiction.
Sometimes, honing my skills means fighting the urge to get ahead of myself, chopping with that dull axe hoping to finally fall a tree with it and instead just getting a big fat splinter in my eye.
