Fail to Success

This is just about the most important lesson I’ve learned this year: fail to success. That’s Dean Wesley Smith’s way of putting it, but it’s another spin on the old saying, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you’ll land among the stars.”

Way back when, when my son had just been born and I was in the throes of postnatal depression, writing became just another yardstick of failure in my life. If I didn’t meet my quota of words for the day, if I fell behind, if – Heaven forbid – I had a day w...