Seek Failure
By Deborah Courtney
“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.” — John F. Kennedy
Fear of failure – and its flip side, fear of success, are great drivers of procrastination for writers.
However…
The only way to succeed is to constantly seek failure. Sit with that for a moment.
The. Only. Way. To. Succeed. Is. To. Constantly. Seek. Failure.
This sounds so counterintuitive, but it is an honest, real truth, even if it is one that is not easy to digest. Why? Failure is bad, right?Well, it certainly doesn’t feel good in the moment. It can be downright painful.
As a society, we celebrate success, and we have a negative view of failure.
We look down on it when it’s someone else’s and we dread it for ourselves. It’s hard and unpleasant.
But if we look to leaders in, say, business, they consistently have a few failures under their collective belt prior to whatever success they have achieved. We forget the failures pretty quickly when success is achieved, but it turns out that those failures are a good part of the reason that success finally happened.
Why is failure so important to writers? Because we are going to experience a lot of it! Unless you are the one in a million fluke who hits it out of the park on your first book, on your first submission, you will experience a whole lot of it. And it does happen – the lottery winners of publishing, who become stars when they are young. And it would be lovely if it happened for you – but if it had, you probably would not be reading this article. So, for the rest of us, it’s the hard work WITH FAILURE that will get us where we want to go.
From a writing perspective, we often hear how many rejections authors received before they finally had an acceptance, and sometimes a really impressive career followed all those rejections.
Jack Canfield says Chicken Soup for the Soul was rejected 144 times before it became a success.
Kathryn Stockett reports that The Help was rejected 60 times.
Stephen King’s Carrie was rejected 30 times.
Have you failed yet at all? Once? Twice? Keep at it.
Failure means you will reexamine the path you are on – is it the right one? Sometimes failure will result in a change in direction, but sometimes it re- affirms the path you are on. Either way, self-examination means you understand what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Maybe you need to wait out an over-saturation of your genre in the marketplace. Maybe you just need to find the right agent or publisher who shares your vision and love your story as much as you do.
Failure builds resilience and the thick skin that working writers need to be able to survive in a tough industry with thin margins.
Courting failure means you are willing to take risks. You are being bold. Some writers hear that an agent or editor loves their story but will pass because they aren’t sure how to market it. Maybe it is cross genre, or in an experimental format.
That’s not failure. That’s information that you can act on.
Failing and yet persevering is foundational to persistence, and persistence is the main predictor of success. Facing the pain of failure, and then proceeding with your plan, is the very definition of perseverance.
Straight talk – having a support network to share your tries and your stumbles with can blunt the pain that comes with can help a great deal. Consider sharing your outcomes with your critique group or a friend who can celebrate your perseverance instead of dwelling on any negative feelings that come with a non-success.
Remove the sting that can come with failures and replace it with a celebration of your audacity at actively courting failure.
Courting failure means you are open to learning WHAT NOT TO DO on your way to success. Maybe you have not executed your novel quite as well as you could have and now you are aware of that and can get back to the work. Maybe you wrote a wonderful book but your queries are not getting results, and you now have the opportunity to fix that and proceed.
Every time you get a no, you have an opportunity to check and see if any adjustments are needed to any part of your project or your approach to getting it published.
And sometimes a no, or a failure, will have nothing to do with you personally, or even the merits of your work – it could be that an agent has other projects too like yours, or a publisher has already filled their upcoming publication lists for your genre. Or, because we are in such a subjective industry – writing is a form of art after all – that a story that will resonate theoretically with millions just didn’t work for the one gatekeeper you approached.
If you let failure keep you from achieving your writing goals, YOU are the impediment to your success. Not the failure. Navigating inevitable failures provides you the path to your desired success, your inevitable success.
Every no puts you one step closer to yes.
So, send the queries, send the pages, constantly seek failure, take risks, celebrate where you stumble and falter, and put those lessons to work for you.
Deb Courtney holds a degree in Fiction from the University of South Florida, where she was a Saunders Scholar in Fiction. She has had numerous short stories published and has worked as a freelance journalist, creativity coach and freelance editor. Her background also includes more than 20 years in Technical Project Management.
Deb hosts the popular “Write Drunk, Edit Sober” improv writing series monthly online, and her debut book, “21 Day Challenge: The Anti-procrastination Workbook for Writers” was released in April 2023. She is Immediate Past President of Pikes Peak Writers, a non-profit in Colorado Springs, CO.