Failure Is Always An Option
It's a mantra on Mythbusters. It's actually one of my favorite quotes from the show. It's a line I've thrown at my son since we built a small science kit from Lowes earlier this month. I am co-opting it right now, though, as a motivational tool. I've written often about my issues with writing fiction. The struggle is very, very real.
And I've let it bleed over into my attempts at blogging here and other places. And I've tried time and time again to claim a level of rededication only to see the hands of doubt reach out from the shadows and place a vise grip on my wrists and shroud my brain.
Call it writer's block if you want, but whatever the feeling is, it has been one of the more difficult things I've fought. It's funny. I know I'm not extremely talented, but I believe I have some skill as a writer. I would place myself at least partway above hack.
And I am not trying to write the fabled Great American Novel, in part because that's not the kind of stuff I like to read. I'm more of a cozy mystery or police procedural or chick-lit/lad lit reader. Quite frankly, I am okay with that. I would take just showing up in the book section of Target with a some kind of a percent sticker off or in the Hudson News at an airport.
Free flow, though, is just not coming. It might be that I'm putting too much pressure on myself.
But I have to recognize that failure is always an option. Because for a writer, you're going to experience a high level of failure. Struggling to come up with themes, topics, stories, plot lines. Getting rejection notices in the mail and being told that you're not good enough or you're not quite what we're looking for at this time; it's all part of the larger sense of failure.
The conscious, rational part of me knows that.
It's getting the scared little kid inside of me to realize that.
And I've let it bleed over into my attempts at blogging here and other places. And I've tried time and time again to claim a level of rededication only to see the hands of doubt reach out from the shadows and place a vise grip on my wrists and shroud my brain.
Call it writer's block if you want, but whatever the feeling is, it has been one of the more difficult things I've fought. It's funny. I know I'm not extremely talented, but I believe I have some skill as a writer. I would place myself at least partway above hack.
And I am not trying to write the fabled Great American Novel, in part because that's not the kind of stuff I like to read. I'm more of a cozy mystery or police procedural or chick-lit/lad lit reader. Quite frankly, I am okay with that. I would take just showing up in the book section of Target with a some kind of a percent sticker off or in the Hudson News at an airport.
Free flow, though, is just not coming. It might be that I'm putting too much pressure on myself.
But I have to recognize that failure is always an option. Because for a writer, you're going to experience a high level of failure. Struggling to come up with themes, topics, stories, plot lines. Getting rejection notices in the mail and being told that you're not good enough or you're not quite what we're looking for at this time; it's all part of the larger sense of failure.
The conscious, rational part of me knows that.
It's getting the scared little kid inside of me to realize that.
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