Failure Is Good

By Simon Collinson 

We should accept and embrace failure and see it for the positive force that it actually is.

Don’t hide from failure. Ride it and use failure to scale the heights.

Failure can be a way of knocking us out of our misconceptions into our own greatness. We can get pretty narcissistic at times. I sometimes write something and look at it and feel it's wonderful, the best thing since Dickens knocked something up.

You send it off confident that when the editor gets it they will be dazzled by the outstanding omnipotence of the work.

I am sure you have all at some time imagined the scene in your heads. As your submitted piece is received.

The editor screams and squeals with delight and beckons all the staff to gather round and read this stunning piece at least 12 times. I am sure some of your imagined scenes have several people with tears of delight in their eyes in the scene.

When in reality the editor is probably groaning and cursing the writing gods. “Why me,why bloody me,  yet another piece of bad writing. why couldn’t I have followed my parents advice to be a lawyer or an accountant..

That rejection note sure as hell hurts, but it shakes you out of your misconceptions. You start to realise that the Sun does not shine out of your arse. There again it might shine out of someone else's…

Rejection teaches us to work harder. 

Rejection teaches us to make changes to adapt. Like Darwinsim. Don’t end up like those prehistoric creatures who could not adapt and therefore died off. Don’t be a sabre tooth tiger. Be one of those who adapted and changed and evolved and survived. Be a cockroach!

Without failure, success becomes meaningless. Imagine that everything you ever did from the time you were born you succeeded in. great? Maybe not. It wouldn’t mean anything. That said, I wouldn't mind coping with meaningless success for a while. I’m thinking it would be a nice problem to have, for a while at least.

Which leads to another point: too much success is a bad thing. It makes everyone else jealous and is bad for the social cohesion of the group. Humans are social animals. We can only survive with the cooperation and goodwill of others. Humanity is a social contract. “I will not kill you” is the usual assumption we humans make about all the other people around us. 

I remember being told by a tutor that we should all remember that when we are in a room full of people that if they so choose they could kill you, quite easily. True, but not a thought you want to hang onto all the time. Imagine how difficult life would be, working , going on the roads, parties, sporting events, getting married. If that rule, the “I will not kill you” wasn’t followed and understood by nearly everyone. 

The fact that no one has total success and has a lot of failure to endure helps with societal cohesion and prevents more people getting killed by other humans.

Failure helps us succeed and become better. Edison when he was being congratulated on inventing the lightbulb said he had learnt to make them wrong a 1000 times before.

Imagine that first light bulb Edison had invented must have been pretty ropey. I’m glad he failed then. Imagine the rubbish light bulbs we’d all have to endure if Edison had gone along with the first lightbulb?

Maybe if we get our piece rejected a 1000 times on the 1001st time we would write a masterpiece. And then the sun will really shine out of our…

Failure and rejection are valuable tools. Use them!

When I get rejected it makes me sad. Use these feelings to give you new ideas. The palette of colours you use as a writer changes according to your mood.

The type of writing produced when you're happy is different to what is produced when you're sad.

Who wants happy writing all the time? It would be like Picasso always doing his paintings in hues of pink all the time. Art historians would have called it his “Pink period”. Let's use all the emotions as many artists would use the full range of colour to fill the canvas.

Rejection makes you angry too. Use it! Anger gives you energy. It also unlocks new ideas in your mind. Use them. I remember a line from a film, “Don’t get mad, get even”. The writer should adapt this to “Don’t get Mad, write something down”.

Kipling called success and failures imposters.

They are not imposters. But they are both valuable tools for any writer to use.

So go on and embrace the failure and let it fill your writing with a richness you never knew existed.

Dare to look behind the curtain and find there is a whole new world out there.

And then write about it.