STAMINA!
Have you go it ? Where does it come from?
At primary school, our headmaster used to say stamina was the secret of success.
This was in the days when schools were obliged to have a daily religious whole-school assembly, and although there were always a couple of hymns and a prayer, Mr Bowering also liked to use the occasion to put across some of his own key messages about life, the universe and everything.
His favourite activities included:
- using a remote-controlled system built into his lectern to illuminate capital cities on the vast wooden map of the world suspended above the platform, and we’d shout out the names of those we knew
(I hardly knew any of them, and envied Simon Evans his legendary total recall) - leading a rousing rendition of William Blake’s hymn “Jerusalem” every Tuesday, an extended assembly to include hymn practice
(I don’t know why it took me so long to join the WI, when I’ve been word- and note-perfect in its anthem since the age of seven) - appointing the King and Queen of the Shiny Shoes every Friday
(I always regretted never having patent leather shoes for instant, constant shine – the rich kids had a clear advantage there)
But perhaps his most memorable eccentricity was to impress upon us the importance of stamina if we wanted to be a success in whatever we did with our lives.
“What do you need?” he would bellow to the sea of rapt faces through cupped hands.
“Stamina!” we would shout back, as one.
Although I suspect I was not the only child to be a little confused as to what it was. The only place I’d heard the word outside school assembly was in a popular television advert for dogfood, possibly Pedigree Chum, which promised to fill your dog with stamina. This was in the same era as the famous Trill birdseed advert that promised to “make budgies bounce with health”. I imagined them ricocheting off the bars of their cages like the ball bearings in a pinball table.
Stamina as a Writer
But his saying stuck with me, and it does still spur me on occasionally. So my ears pricked up (that’ll be the Pedigree Chum kicking in) when Jane Davis, author of award-winning literary fiction, asked writer friends to explain the secrets of their writing stamina. I am very pleased that she chose to include my response among her findings, outlined in her latest blog post here:
https://jane-davis.co.uk/2019/01/22/novel-writing-self-belief-and-staying-power/
I hope Mr Bowering would be proud of me.