I have this theory that if you’ve come out of a bad relationship having discovered some good music, then it’s not been a total loss. Because while that relationship may have ended, the music will live on forever.
After a terrible break-up in my mid-twenties, I emerged clutching to my chest mere shreds of my dignity and the music of Boards of Canada and Daft Punk. A few months later, I knew I was definitely over this person when I could listen to this music without once thinking of him. (My husband introduced me to Kings of Leon back when we were dating and so I suppose it was inevitable that I would marry him.)
I think of the fails in my writing career similarly as well. As long as I came out of it with something valuable that has the potential to serve me for the rest of my life, it’s not a loss, but a win. That four-page story that got killed by TIME magazine? It taught me valuable lessons about the inner workings of a publication and how essential it sometimes is to keep in mind that there are many people who make a decision on a piece of work and sometimes you just can’t please them all.
The editor whose abuse a friend put up with until she had a breakdown taught me about equal relationships between writers and editors and how to create that equality.
That agent whom I adored but had to part ways with eventually taught me several things about strength and persistence, but also that it is important to ask the right and the tough questions at the very beginning. To be your biggest supporter and your biggest fan and to not doubt yourself in the face of criticism if you truly believe in your work.
I’m thinking about the lessons I’ve learned in the last year alone as I’m moving ahead with an ambitious project that I’ve been putting off for years. I truly believe that I wouldn’t have had the persistence, the faith, and the confidence I need to bring it to the world and find the right people to work with me on it had I not gone through all the wrong people first. I now know not only exactly what my project needs, but what I need as a writer, what kind of personality type I’m suited to work with, what my expectations are, and which things I simply refuse to compromise on. I know the tough questions I need to ask when it comes to my career—both from myself and the people I entrust it to—and have had to dig really deep to find the nerve to ask them.
Writers worry far too much about not succeeding, or worse, of failing and then allow that fear to paralyze them. I’m guilty of this, of course. What if this novel doesn’t sell? What if I don’t get an agent? What if my book deal is in the low four-figures?
But so what if your first novel doesn’t sell? You now know that you are capable of not only writing a novel, but finishing one. And so you take that knowledge and you put it to use by writing a second one. So what if you don’t get an agent? You keep improving your skill and your craft, you keep learning from your mistakes, and you practice being persistent to a fault. So what if your book deal is in the low four-figures? You either choose to reject it and keep trying other publishers or you accept it and market the heck out of it, proving to your publisher that the next one deserves ten times that.
There are no failures in writing. There is only practice.
And every bit of practice you do today will ensure that you need to do a little bit less of it tomorrow. But tomorrow you’ll be scaling new heights, breaking down new barriers, learning new lessons.
There is no goal, no having “arrived” in a writing career. There is learning and growing and becoming better than the writer you were a week ago.
The successes, and especially the setbacks, are all part of that.