Kipling’s writing lessons in If are a treasure trove for the writer willing to put them into practice. When I think of maturity and growing up I find myself thinking about Rudyard Kipling’s poem to his son “If”. I first ran across the poem somewhere back in my child hood. Not sure where I first ran into it. Though, I remember it was referenced and read in class in high school and middle school.
Kipling’s Writing Lessons on Two Importers
Even outside of school I found the poem in some of the most unexpected places from lines on buildings and parks. A friend once pointed out that they quoted from the poem over the player’s Center Court entrance.
“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two impostors just the same”
Society
I have found many writers have used ‘If’ in their books and articles. Some of our pop culture is based on this poem from music classics like Bread’s If (https://youtu.be/qGfVOdTiUEc) to TV shows like Boardwalk Empire’s used it as the theme for the Season Three Episode 11 Two Importers.
College
I have had a college roommate put If up on his wall so he could read it daily to remind himself of the standard he needed to make for himself. It became a kind of mantra for him as he dealt with the struggles of getting through college and getting on with life after the Army.
For most of that time I did little with If other than agree this was the general course a young man like myself should follow, then promptly moved on to other things.
Kipling’s Writing Lessons and the Writer
It was not till I sat down to really look at what a professional writer was that I found that Kipling’s writing lessons were much more than a surface level oration for a child. Even more, I found it was relevant to me as a writer with every beat.
Kipling’s lessons on personal integrity, behavior and growth reach deep into the craft of writing. While the poem serves quite well for a personal philosophy and ethos, it also gives a writer a blueprint to follow for their development as a writer.
Kipling’s Lessons
A writer must dream and think, but we really cannot just dream or think. We must do our work. There are pages to be written, edited, rewritten and published. Then the manuscripts and articles must be promoted and the research for the next tale done.
Every book, article, and work launched is an invitation to success or disaster. The writer must see them only for the feedback and the lessons instead of some stamp on their character or a vote of popularity.
Every time a writer publishes, we gamble with all our emotional and financial winnings of life in one pitch of the dice. The mature writer will take the loss silently, at least as far as others might hear, and return to the keyboard with a feeling of having been spent to try another book or article.
A writer must learn to let no critic hurt you, even the one inside.
Act When You Fall
If packs lessons in every line. There is even a lesson of what to do when the world has crashed down on you.
“If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, …”
No truer words for a writer who has just had a failure. Write something fast. Don’t look down or look back. Write. The power of a writer is that even when there is nothing to be done, we can do something. We can act. We can write.
Kipling Life
Kipling’s own life is a hero’s journey of pain that gives us a clear vision of what our own trials may one day yield in our work. His life was more tragedy than gift. In child hood he was denied him parental love and attention, sent by his parents to a faster mother who beat him. Kipling even failed in school where they tried to instill character traits that he was not suited for. He even found great pain in adulthood with the loss of two of his children.
Yet out of all of that pain and misery he gave us a clear definition of what an adult should aspire to. For the writer becoming an adult is to say that we are turning more professional in our effort to write.
Kipling Set Standard
Kipling himself seems to have lived to the very standard he set for his son in the poem. In his life he was successful as a poet in his early years and gained quite a sound popularity that was able to withstand the later critics who attacked his work as superficial without any deep meaning.
The Work
For Kipling the work itself was the point. Because of this more humble take on both himself and his work, he turned down several honors that included Poet Laureate, Order of Merit and even a knighthood. Out of all of them it was only the Nobel Prize for Literature that Kipling accepted in 1907. The results of his work reach far further than mere egotistically driven self-acclaim.
We still read Kipling’s works today. From his works springs a form of immortality that only a dedicated writer is capable of achieving. After over one hundred years, we are still enriched as we bask in his work. The Jungle Book, Kim, and Just So Stories that enrich us all. Of them all it is If that enriches the writer most.
Kipling’s Writing Lessons for Writers
To the writer just reading through his poem is a complete list of the mind, skills, and strengths a writer need to do battle with one’s own ego. There is not one line that every writer should not commit to memory and habit in their pursuit of the craft.
In the lines we find not just the advice to improve ourselves, but also to practice daily those skills that motivate, encourage… much of it comprised of mantras to use in those times the world comes crashing in and our egos rend our spirit to shreds.
Clairity
If is one of those crystal clear lines of thought that if we head and learn from its guidance, we cannot help but become better people as well as better writers. That is the mark of a true master on the path.
‘If’
by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Photo by Artur Aldyrkhanov on Unsplash