Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

Hi everyone!  As I spoke about Monday, the Quill is still going full bore on getting the podcast finished, edited, uploaded, then successfully linked to all the various media outlets I’m trying to manage.  Believe me when I say that while there may not be story posts, I am going hard as I possibly can for one old, slightly out of shape and battered thirty-four year old with no real idea what he’s doing.

While I was editing, however, I had a thought that I’d like to take today’s posting slot and expand and expound upon.

Quit.  Being.  Afraid.  To.  Fail.

Stop it.  Seriously.

So many, SOOOO MAAAAAANY, of the men, women, and merpersons I interact with on a daily basis have completed works that are edited and as realistically good as they can hope to have them at this stage in their careers.

And they do nothing.

I get it!  More than anything else, I understand that fear deep in my bones.  It dogs my every waking moment.  The fear that when all is said and done, the thing that I spent so much time on and cared about so greatly will be scoffed at.  Mocked.  Belittled.  And ultimately forgotten.  That I will have given all that I have, all that I am, and still come up short.

Let’s face it: That’s going to happen.

Unless you are supremely gifted at the art of wordsmything, then you will suck for a very long time at it.  And you’ll suck pretty terribly.

Writing is a uniquely difficult thing to do when you are attempting to be serious about it.   Anyone can post a two thousand word, meandering rant on Reddit.  That’s easy!  No real exposure to criticism beyond the comments section.  No real format to follow.  No onus or expectations to live up to.  Good lord, are you kidding?!  If real storycraft were that simple, we would be drowning in books right now.

The fact of the matter is that once you get down to trying to successfully create material, the easy parts come to a screeching halt.

Suddenly, you have to care about target audience.  You have to care about phrasing.  You have to cut overly elaborate lexicons to their barest elements so that you don’t lose readers.  Even technical journals and articles suffer from technobabble issues (my first editor does gene sequencing scientific journal editing.  It’s a problem in that community as well.)

Consistent tone, character development in correct cycles and order, consistent world building.  Consistent language and style choices, and I haven’t even gotten to the actual writing of the darn thing.  This planning and architectural work is nearly endless, and soaks up a vast amount of the time required to create something worth reading.

After you do all that work, after you try your best to check each box and still be original, you almost don’t want anyone else reading it.  To have done all that and still have someone mock your baby feels like they are mocking you.  Any criticism of your work becomes criticism of your character.  You have melded with the manuscript, become one with their pages and flow.  To attack one is to attack the other.

And that’s where so many prospective authors trip up.  That’s how so many of those I have known since I started two years ago are no longer there, or have given up on trying to improve beyond where they started.  They have become so wrapped up in this idea that to receive criticism of your work is to also receive criticism of your person.

You must be willing to send your baby out into the world and then walk away.  You have to do everything within your power, and once the end is reached and you’ve done all you can, you have got to let go.  You can’t hold on to it forever.  You can’t protect it from the harsh realities of the world.

And no matter how you re-write, or obsess, or polish, or edit, there will be mistakes.  There will be passages that aren’t the best, or aren’t what you had hoped.  Ideas which were lost in the caverns of your mind, never to see paper.

And.  That.  Is.  OKAY.

Writing is not a single manuscript.  It is not just one idea.  You have to be willing to move on to the next thing, even if the next thing is just more of the last thing.  You have to be willing to garner feedback, to expose your work to outside influence.  You cannot write in a vacuum: you’ll never improve!  If the only voice you care to hear with regards to your own work is yours, then you’ll never move past your own blind spots.  You’ll never see around your own prejudices and beliefs as to what is and is not good writing.

So when the time comes, and you’ve written and rewritten “The End” enough times to know that it’s time, have the courage to hit submit.  Be willing to say goodbye, so that you can work on saying hello to something new.

It’s hard, but so are all aspects of writing.  It’s nothing you haven’t done before.

Without Reservation,

The Unsheathed Quill