failure is good for you: how practice novels helped me get published

cross-posted to Tribal Writer: the writing life in the digital age


Fear of failure is a bitch.

It's like the bitch god or bitch goddess – depending on your preferred visualization – covered with dark shaggy hair, snarling, holding sway over so many of us. We learn young – especially in this culture – that people can be either winners or losers, and to be a loser – to Fail – is the worst humiliation anyone could endure, a kind of psychic tar-and-feathering that marks us for life.

So we choose w...