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I recently read an article called “10 Career Lessons from Julia Child.” The lessons were pulled from Julia Child’s autobiography, My Life in France, in which she describes her journey from novice cook to culinary icon. Though the article appears on a personal finance blog, the lessons totally relate to writing.

Here are a few that stood out to me:

1. Invest in yourself. Julia didn’t speak French when she arrived in France. In fact, she says her French seemed to get worse the more she tried to use it and she was surprised the French could understand her at all. “…my inability to communicate was hugely frustrating,” she wrote. One night after a party of mostly French speakers, she’d had it. She declared she was going to learn to speak the language no matter what it took and signed up for a language class that met for six hours each week, plus homework.

If you’re serious about writing but don’t have much experience, that’s okay! Take writing classes, join a critique group and attend conferences and events. Study books on the craft of writing. Even if you’ve been writing for years, you should continue to invest in yourself and find ways to improve.

5. Accept that doing anything well requires hard work. Julia wasn’t satisfied to take culinary classes or write recipes off-the-cuff — her kitchen was her laboratory. While in culinary school, she’d come home from class and spend hours working out the hows and whys of what she’d learned that day. When writing recipes, she’d test every ingredient and measurement, experimenting with mayonnaise until she was certain no one could possibly have written more on the subject than she had. “I had never taken anything so seriously in my life — husband and cat excepted — and I could hardly bear to be away from the kitchen,” she wrote.

Writing takes a lot of work and commitment. Getting published (at least, traditionally) isn’t easy. If that’s your goal, you need to do whatever it takes. Write book after book, and don’t quit when it gets difficult. Take your writing seriously and eventually your hard work will pay off. You might even be like Julia and dread the moments when you’re not writing.

6. Nix the self-deprecating scripts. When a recipe fell flat, Julia didn’t excuse it with self-deprecating comments. “I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations…” she wrote. These types of admissions only draw attention to your shortcomings (or your perceived shortcomings). Usually you’re better than you think you are, and if something really goes wrong, Julia would advise you to suck it up and learn from your mistakes.

This is something I struggled with when writing the first draft of my WIP. At least once a week I’d think it sucked and wallow in self-pity. It was a serious waste of time. Every writer experiences doubt at some point. If you let it take over you, you’ll never move forward. Your book is probably better than you think it is, and if it really is that bad, learn from it.

Check out the article to read the rest of the lessons. Who knew you could learn so much about writing from a chef?

ROW80 Update: Revising is going well this week so far! I spent the last two days working on a couple of chapters that I’m sending to my critique group to read. I haven’t had the chance to start reading the plot section of Revision & Self-Editing but I will once I send these chapters out. So far this week, I’ve logged in 6 hours of editing. I’m on track to get to 15 hours by Sunday’s check-in.

Hope you all are having a productive week!

See how the other ROWers are doing here.