Today the A to Z Challenge continues! I’ll be posting about one letter/word on every weekday in April. Don’t want the barrage of posts? Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll let you know when I start doing new stuff next month!
F is for Failure.
People don’t really like to talk about failure, except that these days you see articles about it every day online, usually opening with a line about exactly that: how people don’t like to talk about failure. Which seems kind of silly when so many people are talking about it.
Failure is an inevitable part of life, especially if you’re a writer. You start by failing to write the great novel you set out to create. Then you fail to be satisfied with it after the first edit, and sometimes after the second, third and fifteenth edits as well. And once you’re done all of that failing, you will inevitably fail to be accepted by at least the first five publishers you send your novel to(and that’s only if you’re extremely lucky; expect to get over ten rejections).
As writers embracing failure is essential to our sanity, but you have to do more than accept failure. You have to learn from it. Why did you fail? What can you do to avoid making the same mistakes next time? How can you better position yourself to succeed?
Of course, being positive about failure is easier said than done. I can talk about self love and forgiveness all I want, but the truth is every time I mess up the first thing I do is curse myself half a dozen times. Only after all the cursing is done do I actually examine the mistakes I made and learn from them. As for the forgiving myself bit, well… Let’s just say I do that more than half the time, but I’ve got a long way to go.
We all fail, but how do you respond to failure? Let me know in the comments section below!
I usually pout a little after a failure, but once I vent a little then I try to learn from it and get moving again.
~Ninja Minion Patricia Lynne aka Patricia Josephine~
Story Dam
Patricia Lynne, Indie Author
A little bit of pouting is totally normal. It’s kind of like how every time I get a really detailed critique I have to walk away from it for a day before I can actually appreciate the comments.
Thanks for stopping by!
Wonderfully Written! I agree, failure is inevitable, perhaps essential in a sense of experience. Besides, it is the something that makes success taste sweeter.
Failure certainly is part of the human experience; as for extra terrestrials, well maybe they’re perfect and that’s why they’re leaving us alone(don’t want to deal with the mess), but I doubt it. Imperfection is what makes the universe so interesting.