A Writer's Best Friend is... Failure?

If you think writing is all about success, you're wrong. Writing is just as much about failure as success. In the right doses, it can be a writer's best friend. 

What are your favorite books about? Are they about perfect people living perfect lives? Are they about kids or adults who effortlessly achieve one brilliant success after another? Can you imagine anything more boring? And do you know of any writer, who, when asked, "What inspired you to write?" answers, "I was inspired by my perfect life?" or, "I was inspired by my string of successes?"

Um, no. Most of us say things like, "I was the class misfit," or "I spent hours alone in my room and turned to books for consolation." Or "I lived in an imaginary world and everyone thought I was crazy until I started writing..."

Mr. Frog

Have you also ever noticed that the most inspiring, positive stories are filled with sadness and death, and the funniest stories are about painful, humiliating events? In 7th grade, I was chosen to serve tea to an honored guest on Career Day. I proceeded to drop a laden tea tray right into his lap. The humiliation of that moment was seared into my memory - and years later, I used it in a scene in The Accidental Witch, one of my first novels. Failure can be one of a writer's biggest inspirations. 

Failure is also an intrinsic part of the writing process. What is revision other than failing to write a perfect story the first - or the second - or the third - or the thirty-third time around? Yep, that's what we writers do. We fail all day long. And then we fail some more. Cheerful, isn't it?

Trying to get published at first often amounts to a string of seemingly endless rejections. EVERY writer, without exception, gets rejected at some point or other in his or her career. I fondly remember one of my early rejections. The book was called "The Crinkle in the Puddle" (don't ask!) and one editor wrote me, "The puddle doesn't have enough personality." "It's a puddle," I remember exclaiming. "It doesn't HAVE a personality!" Needless to say, the book was never published. 

When a writer finally succeeds at publishing a book, there is often more failure awaiting him or her. Reviewers may recoil in horror. "Take away her writing license!" That's what I always imagine a reviewer thinking when they really hate one of my books. Or, "She shouldn't be allowed unsupervised near any alphabet!" Sometimes the reviewers like a book, but the readers hate it. Or sometimes everyone loves it, but no one buys it. What's worse than selling only 22.8 copies of your masterpiece?

I'll tell you where failure really comes in handy, though. It's great for beginning writers. In fact, it should be required. Nothing is worse than seeing a writer with a string of early successes get lazy and arrogant. It's so disappointing - and a waste of good talent! After one of my first picture books, The Salamander Room, sold out its first few printings in a few months, and got stellar reviews everywhere, I imagined myself in a steady rise to the top of the children's book world, with one dazzling success after another. Then my next book, The Oxboy, which I still consider one of my best, flopped. So did my next seven or eight books. As painful as the experience was, it changed my approach in a very positive way. I never again considered success to be my due. When I write a book, I put my best efforts into it, knowing that it might always fail. Carrying that knowledge is part of what it means to be a writer. 

You wouldn't want to have twenty years of nothing but failure. That would be awful! But don't be afraid of failure. It's part of any writer's life.