It’s not enough to be good – you have to show up

Last Saturday night at Notre Dame stadium, the best team didn’t win.

The Fighting Irish, under second-year head coach Brian Kelly, played its first night game in more than two decades. The stadium was packed with fans waving blue and white rally towels. The team upgraded to shiny gold helmets for the occasion.

Everything was perfect, except for one thing – the team didn’t play like they should have. A missed snap, a lackluster defense, penalties and other missteps cost them the game.

In football, you can have a million-dollar coach, the best recruiting system and the fanciest locker room. But if you don’t perform when it counts, none of it matters.

It’s the same in other professions. Think of actors or actresses who’ve been outstanding in one movie only to phone in their performance in their very next next film. Or a restaurant where the food and service is amazing on one visit, and mediocre or worse on the next.

It’s no different for writers. You could have clips from the highest circulation women’s magazines or the most prestigious newspapers in the country, you could have written bestselling books, you could be making $100,000 a year. None of it matters if you don’t bring your A game to the assignment you’re working on today.

As an editor, I’ve seen this a lot. To say it’s frustrating is an understatement. Every editor wants to think their publication is the No. 1 priority of the writers they work with. For some writers, it is, or at least, they do an admirable job of making it look that way. But I’ve also worked with good writers – really good ones – who don’t always turn in work that’s up to their potential, because they are over-committed, focused on other things, or just being lazy (though I hate to think so).

I’ve worked as a writer long enough, too, to know that giving your best performance day in and day out is difficult. You get sick, or your kids get sick. Sources don’t call so you get behind and then have to play catch up and can’t do as good a job as you wanted. I get it.

But those occasions should be the anomalies.

In the end, the writers who’ll go furthest aren’t just the ones with the natural abilities (and the best agents). They’re the one who – like Heisman Trophy winners and Super Bowl champs – push themselves day after day, year after year, to make the most of their natural abilities and experience. They may be good, but they put in the effort too.