Ian Dawson's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing-advice"
Writing Tip of the Week: Embracing Failure
Everyone fails. It’s true. If you know their name, it’s 100% likely that person has failed at some point in their life and/or career. While we may be presented with a polished, public relations-packaged version of that individual, if you dig into their past, you’ll see they were met with failures and disappointments when starting in their profession.
Failure is a part of life. It’s part of the human experience. How we deal with failure and disappointment can lead to either growth and success or giving up and walking away. It can be hard to work on something for months or years only for it not to gain traction or interest once it’s out in public view. It sucks, but it happens.
While it can be challenging to pull yourself out of the perpetual cycle of despair when failure knocks at your door, you must change your perspective and mindset to utilize failure as a helpful tool rather than a hurtful injury.
When failure strikes, step back and ask why you perceive what’s happened as a failure. Are you measuring your successes and failures against those of others? Are you focused too closely on a specific aspect of your work instead of the bigger picture? What’s stopping you from getting back up and trying again? Are you afraid to fail again? Are you chasing the myth of perfection?
If you wrote and self-published a novel, got it on Amazon and other sites, got some good reviews, and didn’t sell a single copy, is that a failure? I’d say you accomplished more than many others have, and now your work is available to be discovered by others. It may not happen overnight, but you will find readers and an audience over time.
Failure will always exist, but how you deal with and work through it will make a huge difference. Maybe that book didn’t sell, but perhaps the next one will. Or the one after that. Keep writing and putting work out there; eventually, you’ll find an audience.
I once saw an interview with author Dan Brown in which he discussed how poorly his first three novels did when they were first published. Even his agent was baffled that they weren’t doing well. Did he give up and stop writing? No.
His fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, became an international bestseller. It was then that his previous three novels also became bestsellers. If he had given up, his writing career would have ended with three books, but he didn’t let the failure of the first three stop him. He embraced it, kept working, and motivated himself to write a novel that currently has sold over 80 million copies.
Don’t allow failure to win and dictate what you should and shouldn’t do when being creative. Use your passion, desire, and drive to push through failure, learn from it, and make yourself a stronger writer as a result.
While it’s important to learn from our failures, it’s even more important to accept that those failures are part of the process on the way to success.
Happy Failing, and I’ll see you next time!
Failure is a part of life. It’s part of the human experience. How we deal with failure and disappointment can lead to either growth and success or giving up and walking away. It can be hard to work on something for months or years only for it not to gain traction or interest once it’s out in public view. It sucks, but it happens.
While it can be challenging to pull yourself out of the perpetual cycle of despair when failure knocks at your door, you must change your perspective and mindset to utilize failure as a helpful tool rather than a hurtful injury.
When failure strikes, step back and ask why you perceive what’s happened as a failure. Are you measuring your successes and failures against those of others? Are you focused too closely on a specific aspect of your work instead of the bigger picture? What’s stopping you from getting back up and trying again? Are you afraid to fail again? Are you chasing the myth of perfection?
If you wrote and self-published a novel, got it on Amazon and other sites, got some good reviews, and didn’t sell a single copy, is that a failure? I’d say you accomplished more than many others have, and now your work is available to be discovered by others. It may not happen overnight, but you will find readers and an audience over time.
Failure will always exist, but how you deal with and work through it will make a huge difference. Maybe that book didn’t sell, but perhaps the next one will. Or the one after that. Keep writing and putting work out there; eventually, you’ll find an audience.
I once saw an interview with author Dan Brown in which he discussed how poorly his first three novels did when they were first published. Even his agent was baffled that they weren’t doing well. Did he give up and stop writing? No.
His fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, became an international bestseller. It was then that his previous three novels also became bestsellers. If he had given up, his writing career would have ended with three books, but he didn’t let the failure of the first three stop him. He embraced it, kept working, and motivated himself to write a novel that currently has sold over 80 million copies.
Don’t allow failure to win and dictate what you should and shouldn’t do when being creative. Use your passion, desire, and drive to push through failure, learn from it, and make yourself a stronger writer as a result.
While it’s important to learn from our failures, it’s even more important to accept that those failures are part of the process on the way to success.
Happy Failing, and I’ll see you next time!
