Facing Failure

A couple of weekends ago I was in New York City at the SCBWI winter conference. (If you don't know about SCBWI, I will happily explain it to you.) One of the most memorable talks for me was Kate Messner's examination of the power of failure.

We writers are certainly familiar with failure. How many rejections have you received? How many revisions have you had to make? How many published books failed to sell out? It happens.

What Messner

encouraged us to do is to change our perception about failure. Instead of looking at failure as a negative, she suggested we look at it as the fastest and best way to achieve our goals. In fact, she said, we should be trying to fail as often as possible.

Okay, I know it sounds counter intuitive. Shouldn't we be aiming for success, after all?

Here's an example she gave. A study divided a group of artists into two groups. Let's say they were making pottery. The first group was told they would be graded on achieving one really excellent pot. They did not have to worry about how many pots they made--just one really good one and they'd ace the class. The second group was told to produce as many pots as they could--the more they made, the higher their grade. Quality was irrelevant.

At the end of the study, a panel examined the pottery samples to determine the best ones produced by both groups together. What the observers found was that the group that made many, many pots also produced the best pots. Why? Failure. They produced one pot after another after another. And they learned things. What worked. What techniques produced a stable pot. How to make the pot symmetrical. And so on.

This pretty much applies to any endeavor really. I know dozens of writers who are so concerned about producing the perfect manuscript, that they never produce another. I knew a man in a workshop I attended who had been working the same novel over and over for 20 years.

When I wrote my first novel, I was guilty of this. It took me about ten years of working on it (granted, sporadically, as I was also raising children) to get it "good enough" to start submitting. It got a few positive rejections. Failure.

Since then, I have written several more novels and half a dozen more in my brain. Once I let go of that one needs-to-be-perfect manuscript, I was able to forge ahead and produce many  more, all of which are infinitely better than that first one. In fact, (surprise, surprise) each one is better than the last. What if I just kept writing as many as I could and never stopped. I'd produce a lot of failures. But I'd also produce a few really good books.

I liken this to shooting darts at a dartboard. The more darts you throw, the more likely your chance of hitting a bulls-eye. Right?

So as you start this new week, look for ways to fail. Embrace it. Do it some more. And learn.

If you'd like to explore the topic more, see Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win, by Ryan Babineaux and John Krumboltz.

Authorial Acrobatics

It's Niagara Falls. It's one of the most beautiful natural wonders in the world. Who wouldn't want to walk across it?

Nik Wallenda

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/n/nik_wallenda.html#OO22YQ6pkePZquXT.99

"It's Niagara Falls. It's one of the most beautiful 

natural wonders in the world. Who wouldn't want to 

walk across it?" -- Nik Wallenda

The World English Dictionary defines "acrobat" as "an entertainer who performs acts that require skill, agility, and coordination, such as tumbling, swinging from a trapeze, or walking a tightrope." This definition could also apply to a writer.

Entertainer
No matter what we write--non-fiction, children's books, literary fiction, or whatever--our primary purpose is to entertain. OK, maybe we want to enlighten, instruct, shock, or create abstract art, but whatever we want to do with out writing, it will go nowhere if readers don't find it at least somewhat entertaining. There are a lot of books out t here, and people will go back to the authors they have enjoyed in the past.

"I hope what I do and what I just did inspires people 

around the world to reach for the skies." -- Nik Wallenda

Performer
In order to entertain, we perform. We create and construct. We put ourselves in front of an audience and risk failure and ridicule in the hopes of succeeding.

Skill
Successful writers require a number of skills. We must have grammar and story-telling skills. We must be able to say old things in new ways. We must learn and practice the arts of writing, including understanding how to structure a story, how to write dialogue, how to make non-existent people live. Many, maybe most, of the basic skills of a writer can be learned, but they must be practiced and be combined with a difficult-to-define something that puts them above others who have solid writing skills but can't write a story.

"The impossible is not quite impossible 

if you put your mind to it." -- Nik Wallenda

Agility
A writer must be flexible. A writer must be able to turn on a dime, to perform sleight-of-hand tricks, to create and control puppets while the puppeteer remains unseen. Agility applies both to the flexibility required to create characters and their stories, and to scheduling writing time around a busy life.

Coordination
Most people who attempt to write fall flat on their faces. Even the successful authors. But the successful writer learns through practice how to keep from falling, even when flirting with the disaster that is present in nearly every first draft.

"I've trained all my life not to be distracted 

by distractions."--Nik Wallenda

Tumbling
We fall. We get up. We make our characters fall and get up. We perform amazing and dangerous stunts, jumps, and twists. We are under a constant danger of stepping out of bounds or landing on our heads. Every step of the writing life is flirting with danger and risking failure. But we learn to "fall with style" so our tumbles become intentional and our rebounds are artful.

Swinging from a trapeze
Every jump we make in our stories risks failure, and failure can be disastrous. We swing in the air, grasping our thoughts and ideas, letting go to grasp at the next one. Will we catch it? We won't ever find out without letting go of the comfortable hold we have on where we are.

"Every walk that I do, there's obstacles in the way. There's always 

somebody or something that comes across negative, 

but I live for that sort of thing." -- Nik Wallenda

Walking a tightrope
The balance required to successfully complete a story often seems impossible. When we're out beyond the imagined safety of our beginning and our end, treading carefully on a narrow line that constantly threatens to swing out from under us, it often seems like we'll never reach our destination safely. Most people who start a book never finish. They either fall or they give up and sit down somewhere in the middle, holding on to the dream but failing to move forward. Those who succeed take one step at a time, blending caution with the requirement to teeter constantly on the edge of disaster. It seems like every force in the universe has combined to knock us off the tightrope.


And so...
And so, if we have to be acrobats, why not make the best of it? How much fun is it to watch an acrobat who does his or tricks above the safe cushion? Sure, it can be fun and you can still be amazed by the perfmorer's talents. But, as an author, if you want to gain an audience and make them share in your nervousness, to make your readers hold their breaths from beginning to end, you have to write without a net. You have to transcend the comfort of the ground and put everything on the line. You have to risk spectacular failure. Make your reader afraid. Make them wonder how you can possibly get out of danger and safely reach the end without toppling into the abyss of failure. What's more, every time you succeed, you need to increase the risk for your next stunt. If you're comfortable, you'll fail. Danger heightens awareness and attention, and makes you respect the tightrope, causes you to keep working, to take each dangerous step, and to put on a brilliant show.
  

"I'm one of those people who always tries 

to overachieve. I want to do more. 

I want to do bigger things." -- Nik Wallenda

And that's what you want to do. You want to entertain brilliantly, which means hazarding spectacular peril. So discard the net. Go higher. Go farther. Risk it all. It's scary, but the success will be worth it when you look back and see what you overcame to achieve your tale.