Writing Wednesday: Capacity for Failure

People talk to me about their dreams of becoming a writer for obvious reasons. I sometimes find myself making judgments in my mind about whether or not they will be successful. I could be absolutely wrong about these judgments. I have not done a scientific survey, but the number one factor in successful writers that I see is the capacity to absorb failure. Not just to throw out a manuscript again and again, though that has its uses. The ability to absorb the failure, and come out on the other side having learned something and eager to move forward. I believe this is one of the most useful skills for everyone to develop, and here are some ways that I think I've taught it to my kids:

1. Daughter, 11, wants to crochet herself a skirt. I gamely buy her ten skeins of orange yarn, ask her if she wants to look at a pattern, and make comments about how neat her crocheted stitches are. Though I can obviously tell that the skirt will be too large for her and that it has no shape, I make no comment about this. I feel strongly that she learns better by actually doing than by hearing. More than that, I believe that there is a message that is much stronger about her capability to deal with real-life problems when I simply allow her to deal with them without my needing to intervene and show her "the right way." Sure, it is mostly a waste of yarn. And sometimes there is that itch to help, but I believe it is my job as a mother to resist this.

2. Daughter, 16, calls me on the phone to ask me how she is supposed to get to school. I am a hundred miles away on a school visit. I tell her I don't know, and that she probably should have talked to me about the problem the night before if she expected me to help her. I suggest she could walk or ride a bike or possibly call a neighbor she feels comfortable asking a favor. Then I hang up. I do not call back to see what her solution has been. I assume that she will make a choice and deal with it on her own. It is possible she will choose not to go to school. But the choice is ultimately hers.

3. Son, 9, crashes while riding a bike that is too big for him. He gets 5 stitches in his lip and spends the evening in bed. The next day, he asks if he can go out riding his bike again. I think about it and tell him that so long as he wears his helmet, he can. Three days later, he is on the too big bike again, and this time has mastered it.

4. Daughter, 5, desperately wants "The Rainbow Art Set." I am dubious about its many television claims, but say nothing. She saves up her money, buys the set and then waits eagerly for it to arrive. Then she tries it out. Nothing works as it claimed to in advertisement. She comes up to me and says, "They lied to me about this." I nod and comfort her in her disappointment. TV ads are never the same again. She begins to think about how they might be lying and is often right.

5. Son, 8, criticizes my cooking. I explain to him that I work on a budget and that I can't buy everything he might want. He says he could do a better job, given the same money. So one week that summer, I take him and all of the other kids to the store with the amount of money that I spend on a day's meals and watch them purchase what they think would be more delicious than my choices. We spend an entire week eating kid food, including sugared cereal for breakfast, macaroni and cheese for lunch, and Ramen for dinner. There is a lot of candy and treats. There are no fruits and vegetables. Nonetheless, we survive and the kids say that they don't want to be in charge of the food anymore and that eating bad food makes them sick.