Thursday, February 12, 2009

On Writing and Failure

This morning I decided to actually read through the 103 pages of the original draft of 7 Days. I vaguely remember discarding the hard copy a few months ago, thinking, I'm never gonna use any of this, which means I had to reprint it. There's something about being able to physically see the words on the page that makes me feel like the writing is real...as if it's all fake when it's sitting on the screen in front of me. 

As I read through the first chapter, I realized that it's all crap. It's not that everything is useless, it's that I can't use most of what was written. It's frustrating to see 103 pages of writing in front of me--writing that took me months to complete--and realize that I can't use but a few sentences. I guess the silver lining is going through the process. 

If I hadn't written those pages, I wouldn't know what was on them. Having gone through the experience, I can play with what was written, pull out the chunks that work, and see where to go from here. 

In my Life Coach training (really just the book I've been reading, Co-Active Coaching, as classes don't start until Feb 21st), I've been learning that failure is a necessity for success and the importance of celebrating failure.
In order to take the risks that will enable them to walk and run in their lives, clients must be willing to glop, fall, and get back up and learn fro the experience. ... Whether a person fails or succeeds, one of the underlying goals is always to look at the learning that results from the experience.
I can choose to look at the 103 pages of nearly useless material as failure, or I can choose to celebrate the 103 pages and learn from everything within them. As I'm reading through each chapter of the draft, I'm pulling out the nuggets and making notes and getting ideas on how to move forward. I'm realizing that without thinking about it, I'm choosing to celebrate the failure of a partial manuscript that doesn't work as is and work towards something that's not only readable, but meaningful.

2 comments:

  1. i agree...your blog is excellent and i always enjoy the time i get to stop by!

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