Let's talk about failure · 2:57am Jan 29th, 2015
Sorry for disappearing off the face of the earth this week. Thinks have been busy for me, and it was a bit of a shock to come back to about forty social updates... ninety percent of them related to people reading, liking, and commenting on Appletheosis. I've had recognition before--a story accepted on EQD, and others that won contests--but my RCL interview has had, by far, the largest impact on my exposure. It's so bizarre to know that somebody added one of my stories to a bookshelf titled "Absolute Best." Thank you a so much, everybody, for giving my stories your time!
With that out of the way, let's start on today's topic.
I failed spectacularly! Hooray!
I mean, like... super-duper failure. It was incredible. As I mentioned earlier, I'd decided to participate in Obselescence's contest, the More Most Dangerous Game. Being late to the starting line, I had less than two weeks left to write my entry. My biggest problem? In just four days, I'd written 24,000 words... well above the contest's maximum limit of 15,000 words. So I figured, what the heck: As long as I could finish the story before the time limit, I'd consider it a personal success. Unfortunately, life got a little complicated over the last week. You see, I was given an opportunity to do some writing work for a friend of the family. I'd be a fool to turn down money given my current state of unemployment, so I stopped the presses and focused on work instead.
As you can see from Obselescence's latest blog post, the contest is now closed to submissions. My story was nowhere near completion. Let's take stock of the situation, shall we?
(1) I gave a sample of my writing to my potential employer. He's thrilled with the quality and is eager to pay me for my efforts, with the promise of additional contract work in the future. For the first time in my life, I have been paid to write.
(2) My entry for the contest still isn't finished because I've been having way too much fun writing it. I've gotten back into my old writing groove, and it feels great to be writing "full time" again.
As far as I'm concerned, everything I described above was a complete failure. Why?
Because a "failure" is any outcome you didn't expect.
If you try something, and it goes MUCH BETTER than you ever thought possible, that is technically a failure. I never would have imagined that, in the space of a single week, I would be this much closer to supporting myself financially through my writing. If I hadn't been let go from my previous job, none of this would have happened: I'd still be clinging to the "security" of a job that wasn't even earning me a living wage.
Make mistakes. Learn from them. Exploit any happy accident that comes your way. Be prepared to accept that, despite all your fears and apprehensions, your life may not go exactly as you hoped and dreamed. You may not get the mediocre safety that everybody else dreams of, just coasting through life without any passion or challenge. Don't do things the right way. Do things your way.
And the next time someone calls you a failure for any reason, do what I do: Thank them for the complement.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to go read some of the contest entries. I suspect it shall be very interesting indeed.
A: Oh, no! We failed!
B: There is no such thing as failure, only learning experiences.
A: Yeah! We just had an amazing learning experience!
B: I'll call an ambulance.
Sounds like somebody just had a near-life experience!
Okay, somebody's gonna want to do it, so I'll do it and take the "Why you dissin' Duncan on his blog, esse?" hit.
Certainly if your primary criterion of success is, "Is my process under control," then failure is anything indicating that it's not under control. But I don't know that I particularly buy that this is a really good criterion of success. If you're in manufacturing and looking to hit tolerances, sure. I suspect the argument could even be extended to a lot of service industry work: if you repair these computers too fast, then it'll create extra hassles for yourself (being given new work) or other people (having to find new work for you)[1].
For anything where there's not a clear bounded region defining "quality", though, I'm not sure I feel like the metaphor extends well. Can a story really be too good? Is Harry Potter poor from a literary standpoint because it grew beyond hum-drum children's literature? Is "Casablanca" a less good movie because it wound up being more than the B-level release it was intended as?
Now maybe I'm adding valuation to 'failure' you don't mean to have there, but I do think it's a fairly natural valuation, commensurate with the standard use of the word. Then again, it kind of undermines your central thematic construct here of meaning subversion—which is well executed! So maybe I should just stop being all nit-picky about what people mean and appreciate the fact that it's a well put-together and entertaining blog post.
[1] I mean, yes, they could just pay you to do a job and leave it at that, and the rate at which you finish the job is your own business as long as it's less than a minimum threshold, but that'd be sensible in a way many workplaces refuse to be sensible. Then again, most of my work experience comes from Japan, where I was in an office culture that valued presence a lot more than work, and nobody really cared what I did as long as they could see I was doing something[2].
[2] How else do you think I got into fanfic and gained my existing writing experience?
Man, screw you with your bait and switch.
But seriously, that's great news! Keep that groove up, get those contacts and eyeballs on your work, and most importantly, that sweet moolah. Stay awesome, man.
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My primary point was that "failure is not necessarily a bad thing, and shouldn't necessarily be avoided." Scientists do experiments because they want to see if a theory is sound... but if the experiment does fail, that's good too: they pay very close attention to how and why it failed, which allows them to formulate a less-flawed theory.
As you say, however, "failure as success" can still have a downside. Let's extrapolate on your example, and say you designed a factory that's supposed to assemble one thousand blue counter-clockwise widgets every day. It turns out, however, that it manufactures three thousand every day. Sure, that's good, but it also means you failed to take full advantage of the potential: you'll run out of raw materials three times as fast, and will need to scramble to find a larger supply.
Another example: My story got a lot of attention after it was featured on RCL. Great! But if I had decided to publish a story right when the attention was at it's peak, I could have taken better advantage of the publicity and possibly hit the featured box, thus getting even more attention. Unfortunately all I have at the moment are older stories, which are much less likely to be featured.
It's not so much a "failure" as a "missed opportunity." But it's still an important consideration. People go to cons and sell merchandise, and find they run out almost immediately. If they bring more merchandise than they expect to need, they risk having leftovers. Which is better? Personally, I think it's better to err on the side of audacity... without going completely overboard, of course.
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Aww, yiss! It's all about the Bordens.
No, not that kind. The other kind.
Congratulations on getting money for words. It's a pretty good feeling. I still enjoy it whenever I sell a dollar short story to some random person. Sounds like you are getting even more legitimate writing work. Good luck keeping it rolling.
We move forward with each turn of the drill.
If you're going to fail, fail spectacularly and in the most awesome manner possible. Seems like you did just that. Congratulations.
That's awesome you're getting paid to write! I'm curious to hear more about it. What kind of parameters are you given? Do you have to do a lot of research for it? How creative were you allowed to be with it? In short, was it fun?