Writers Are Failures

Writing is about failure. If you want to be a successful writer, you should probably get used to the idea that you’re going to fail a lot.

Well, no. Actually, you can’t get used to it. Getting used to failure means that it doesn’t hurt you anymore and that somehow you expect. You can’t expect failure as a writer because you’ve got to keep believing that *this* book is going to be *the one.*

And the truth is, every book has the chance to be *the one.* In some alternate universe other than the one we live in, your book will be the mega bestseller there that you thought it would be here. Or it will change the world. It will reinvent everything that people thought they knew about writing.

There. But it may not to do it here.

I tell people a lot that I wrote 20 novels before I wrote one that got published. I don’t know any other authors who have written that many books.

Am I proud of the fact that it took me that long? Well, yeah, sort of I am.

Because I didn’t take short cuts. I never stopped believing that I could make it. And I didn’t stop looking critically at my own books after I’d written them so I could see what was good and bad about them. I kept seeing that there was some kernel of something I’d tried to do that was brilliant, but that it hadn’t been fully realized. So I had to try all over again. From the beginning.

And you know what? I keep failing. I still write about 5 novels to every book that I publish. Some part of me wishes they were all publishable, but they’re not. I keep writing by throwing myself at a thing and wrestling with it. Sometimes I win and sometimes the thing wins.

I don’t like failure. I cry over my books that don’t get published. I sometimes wish I could see the alternate universe where that book was the perfect one that matched the exact set of circumstances that would make it *the book.*

But I’m here. In this world. And being creative isn’t about success anymore than it’s about failure. It’s not about the result. That’s where people get messed up. You don’t get to decide if you’re a creative person when you succeed and when you don’t.

You only get to decide if you’re going to put yourself in the ring again. I think that if you’re surrounded by other people who think they can shape your creative impulse into something that always works or always connects with other people—you’ll end up being stunted. You’ll think about the results.

And that’s not what creative people are supposed to do. I know, we live in this capitalist world where it’s hard not to think of money as the ultimate badge of success. But that’s not ultimately what your job is, to make money.

Your job is to try, and to fail. And to keep doing it. Success is almost beside the point. Because all you’re going to do is fail again after you’ve succeeded.

I’m not saying it won’t hurt it. It damn well better. You’re the chosen sacrifice. You do what other people can’t do, because they want success. You have to want something other than that. You want the journey itself.