There was a night, around draft number six or maybe twelve, (who’s counting) when I seriously considered deleting the entire manuscript and pretending the whole thing was a fever dream.

At that point, The Last Adam had ballooned into a 500-page theological action movie written by a guy who couldn’t even decide if angels should wear tactical gear or Armani. I told myself, “Ron, you can’t write this. It’s too weird. People want cozy romances and thrillers about lawyers, not celestial warfare and modern Messiahs.”

Then I realized: everything that’s ever mattered in my life started with someone thinking it was a dumb idea.

The Wright brothers? Dumb idea.

Wi-Fi on airplanes? Dumb idea.

Jesus saying “Love your enemies”? Universally voted dumbest idea of the century.

But those ideas changed the world.

So I stopped worrying about whether my story was too strange and started worrying about whether it was true. Not factual truth, but emotional truth. The kind that makes you whisper “ouch” even when you’re smiling.

That night, I didn’t quit. I just changed one line. And that one line changed the next hundred pages.

Sometimes persistence doesn’t look heroic. Sometimes it just looks like staying in the chair five minutes longer than you wanted you to.