Permission to Screw Up: Granted

robjvargas · Dec 3, 2014

I've been noticing recently (and not just here at AW) posts where writers ponder giving up because the perfect words won't come out. I'm not trying to lay any blame on anyone. Quite the contrary.

We all hit speed bumps where we scrunch our faces, think so hard we smell smoke, shake the ever-living-daylights out of our muse...

And what hits the page is pure, unadulterated, unmitigated, foul-smelling trash. I have a page or three that I keep locked and hidden because I'm afraid dumpster-divers will read it, and that the smoke of burning them will stink up the whole area.

We need those moments, though. For a couple of reasons. Primarily, I think, we don't get better by playing safe. We find our limits, and expand them, by reaching outside those limits until we fall down. Then we get up, dust ourselves off, and we go there again. And again. Eventually, we don't fall down. Further on, we might even get good at that challenge.

This is true of athletes, of professionals, of hobbyists, and it doesn't matter whether it's a physical activity or an intellectual one.

Be ready to admit, "I can't." But understand that it really means, "I can't, yet." Almost every time, the difference between those who succeed and those who fail is that the winners got back up and tried one more time than they failed.

Find out the history of Silly Putty. Of Post-It Notes. Mistakes. Pure, tragic failures, until someone went, "wait, I can..."

The telephone was a failure... until Alexander Graham Bell spilled acid on himself.

Arthur Dent was a failure until the Vogons... uh... wait... that was a story. :idea:

Remember that you enjoy this, and even in failure, what you're creating didn't exist until you created it. That's amazing stuff. So, yeah, permission to screw up is granted. And, hey, you never know. Maybe that horrible drama you just wrote is actually genius comedy!

Parametric · Dec 3, 2014

If we're saying that failure is only a stepping stone toward success, that's a nice thought, but perhaps not applicable to the 99% of aspiring writers who will never reach success. For them, failure is only a stepping stone toward more failure.

Jamesaritchie · Dec 3, 2014

We all screw up at times. We all write bad sentences, paragraphs, pages, and whole stories at times, but I don't think it's about permission to screw up. We do the best we can possibly do, and if we have talent and skill, then more often than not, what we write will be pretty good. If it isn't, we fix it the best way we can.

I'm not big on the what you're creating didn't exist until you created it. That's amazing stuff.

No, it usually isn't amazing. It's usually just sad. And while that horrible drama you just wrote may actually be genius comedy, chances are it's just horrible drama. When people laugh where you intended them to cry, they're laughing at you, not at your funny story.

Some writers certainly can get better and better with time, I hope we all do, but most will never get very good, will never reach the level of competing with those who sell regularly. That's just life, and it's true in every field there is.

I'm all for using failure as a stepping stone to success. I think being able to do this is important. But I also know this sometimes meaning changing your path, abandoning what you were doing, and moving on to something entirely different.

I suspect almost everyone is really good at something, but not everyone is really good at writing, just as not everyone has the talent to be great at playing the piano, or painting, or sculpting, or building houses. We all have things we can do well, and we all have things we simply never will be able to do with any level of competency.

Screwing up isn't about permission, it's what we all do, if we try enough things. It's normal, and it should be a learning experience. When we keep screwing up time after time after time after time after time, however, it's probably a sign that it's time to move on, time, to find something we do much better.

I think W. C. Fields said it best. "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. If you still don't succeed, quit. There's no use being a damned fool about it."

lizmonster · Dec 3, 2014

Parametric said:
If we're saying that failure is only a stepping stone toward success, that's a nice thought, but perhaps not applicable to the 99% of aspiring writers who will never reach success. For them, failure is only a stepping stone toward more failure.

Well, I think there's a couple of things about this.

1) You can't know if you're one of those who will have success. I disbelieve that anyone who has had great success does not have a drawer just like Rob's containing pages that are so awful they would unwind the fabric of time if they hit the air.

If you give up just because you haven't had success yet - well, you've guaranteed failure, haven't you?

2) Success has different meanings for different people, and that meaning can change over time. Not everybody needs the NYT bestseller list to find themselves successful.

I can see what you're saying - that at some point, continued effort actually becomes counterproductive, and even painful and damaging. And it's frustrating, because when you're in the middle of failure after failure, your own objectivity is shot to hell, and on some level you don't know if continuing is the better choice, or the worse one. (Yes, I have been there. Recently.)

But I rather like the philosophy of giving yourself permission to screw up. Words don't fall from the pen perfectly formed (at least not for most writers, and I'm betting that includes most writers that we would all agree are successful). If you give up after the first dreadful sentence, or the third, or the thousandth - then yeah, you're unlikely to get anywhere.

I don't know. Maybe I like this idea because I'm drafting at the moment, and a huge percentage of it is terrible, and I'm trying to have faith that it won't stay that way.

But I do know that if I don't get the ideas out - even badly - I won't be able to refine them. If I didn't give myself permission to get it totally wrong, I'd never get to the point of even approaching getting it right.

Michael Davis · Dec 3, 2014

Took me 120 rejection letters and almost two years before I got the first contract, then in two weeks I had three contracts. I think persistence is the key word. Most times, even with the ability to write enveloping stories, still hard to break that initial barrier. After 20 releases, I find it easier now for each new story to get a contract, yet I damn near gave up after first two years of rejection.

Jamesaritchie · Dec 3, 2014

lizmonster said:
Well, I think there's a couple of things about this.

1) You can't know if you're one of those who will have success. I disbelieve that anyone who has had great success does not have a drawer just like Rob's containing pages that are so awful they would unwind the fabric of time if they hit the air. If you give up just because you haven't had success yet - well, you've guaranteed failure, haven't you?

2) Success has different meanings for different people, and that meaning can change over time. Not everybody needs the NYT bestseller list to find themselves successful.

.

You can guarantee failure by stopping too soon, or by continuing long after it's too late to do something else. When is "yet"? A year? Five years? Twenty years? I don't believe in giving up easily, but there comes a time when you have to be realistic with yourself, or you will fail in the worst possible way because there won't be time or energy to succeed at something else. I've seen it happen, and I can't think of anything sadder. I've seen writer after writer who, after writing eight, or ten, or fifteen novels, who put in mode than a decade of hard work and study, who not only didn't improve, but who were worse after all that time and effort than they were with novel number one.

I know two who simply broke, came apart at the hinges, when they realized how many years had passed that they could never get back.

Yes, success has different meanings, but you have to be a realist here, too. No, not all of us has to be an NYT bestseller, but there must be some level of realistic success. Too many say the only failure is giving up, and that's lunacy. Giving up is the only chance most of us have to succeed at something else.

I think it's the age we live in, but none of us are allowed to fail now. It's all about, "Yes, you can", and self-esteem, and trying is just as good as accomplishing. Not so long ago, failure was considered normal, and nothing to be ashamed of. You failed, so you moved on. It's still considered a prime trait of the truly successful. Now people act like failure is shameful, worse than admitting to sex with a sheep.

If you can't fail, if you call anything you do a success, regardless of the results, you're kidding yourself, and you probably never will succeed at anything, at least to the degree you could and should. No, the NYT list is not a requirement, but we do not succeed just because we try something, and we do not succeed by setting our goals so low that we can't possible fail to achieve them. There must be a reasonable balance between the NYT, and just covering a page with ink.

RedWombat · Dec 3, 2014

Back in ceramics class, in college, at the end of the year we would gather up all our dishes and pots and sculptures that we had labored over for weeks--and you really do labor for weeks, because you're sculpting and drying and firing and glazing and firing again--and we would look at them.

And what we generally realized was that we had created a lot of things that sucked. There is just a point where you hold this lumpy-ass thing in your hand and you realize that it has not added to the sum total of awesome in the universe--and that you don't have to keep it.

And then you wind up and fling it into the massive dumpster behind the ceramics studio and it smashes against the bottom and a demented exhilaration surges through you and you grab the next one and smash it and it is glorious.

Now, there are people who do not smash their failed work, who cannot bear to do it, and so there was always a shelf full of sad lumpy clay things with a little "free to good home" sign on it. Some of them possibly were adopted eventually. Mostly, though, we learned to smash.

Pottery, particularly wheel-throwing, is wonderful for this, incidentally. You fail over and over and you fail fast and you are creating quantity to lead to quality. You throw and throw and throw and things die on the wheel and things die when you take them off the wheel and things explode in the kiln and after you have made a dozen or two dozen or a thousand, none of them are precious any more. There is always more clay.

I can't do pottery any more because if I tried to hunch over a wheel these days, my back would go out so hard that I would never walk upright again. But I still think it was one of the most valuable classes I ever took, because it taught me to acknowledge failure, not to fear it, and then smash the hell out of it.

Jamesaritchie · Dec 3, 2014

Michael Davis said:
Took me 120 rejection letters and almost two years before I got the first contract, then in two weeks I had three contracts. I think persistence is the key word. Most times, even with the ability to write enveloping stories, still hard to break that initial barrier. After 20 releases, I find it easier now for each new story to get a contract, yet I damn near gave up after first two years of rejection.

That's really a pretty short time. I don't think anyone would suggest giving up after only two years. Even a bachelor's degree takes four years, often to learn something fairly simple. Persistence is certainly a good trait to have, but what if it had been five years, or ten, or fifteen, and nothing good had happened?

When I first started writing, the general consensus seemed to be that, assuming you were actually planting your butt and writing on a regular basis, five years should tell the story. You should have some measure of success, should start selling something, or you probably never would.

At least, five years was what I read most often, and what several successful writers I talked to told me. There can obviously be mitigating circumstances, and it was only a rule of thumb, but i still think it's a pretty good one.

Five years, of course, was also the famous deal Dean Koontz made with his wife. She agreed to support him for five years, saying if he didn't make it as a writer by then, he never would, and he agreed. If I remember correctly, it took him less than two.

Anyway, I'm all for persistence, but I still think there comes a point where persistence turns into being a damned fool.

Hapax Legomenon · Dec 3, 2014

Five years? Since when? I know too many people who started writing at eight or ten. To give up at thirteen or fifteen because you're not any good seems unwise.

ap123 · Dec 3, 2014

There are two threads in this one, "permission" to screw up, and "permission" to give up.

I don't know if there's a timeline for giving up, one person might write and query one mss in five years, another might write and query 10.

But for me, I do think there is truth to the idea there's a point where it becomes more harmful than hopeful.

CrastersBabies · Dec 3, 2014

I tend to grow faster through mistakes than through successes. I have given myself permission to suck and it's helped me. Others will grow differently.

Hapax Legomenon · Dec 3, 2014

ap123 said:
But for me, I do think there is truth to the idea there's a point where it becomes more harmful than hopeful.

The point where it becomes more harmful than hopeful is when you're doing it not because you enjoy it but because it's all you think you know how to do.

ap123 · Dec 3, 2014

Hapax Legomenon said:
The point where it becomes more harmful than hopeful is when you're doing it not because you enjoy it but because it's all you think you know how to do.

Heh, if I knew how to do it I'd be published.

lizmonster · Dec 3, 2014

Jamesaritchie said:
YYes, success has different meanings, but you have to be a realist here, too. No, not all of us has to be an NYT bestseller, but there must be some level of realistic success. Too many say the only failure is giving up, and that's lunacy. Giving up is the only chance most of us have to succeed at something else.

There's truth in this - but the trouble is, how do you tell? I can't look at someone whose writing is problematic today and tell them that in ten years they'll still suck, so they should give up. We all make choices in life that turn out to have been wrong, and it's not for me to try to dictate someone else's future. What's worse: trying, and figuring out after ten years that it's the wrong choice; or giving up and always wondering if maybe it might have worked out?

Some of this may be in the approach. I'd never tell someone young and inexperienced that they can make a living as a fiction writer. Based on what I've read, many (if not most) fiction writers have additional sources of income. I'd tell that person to get themselves a good day job with regular hours, and write on top of that.

For me - I didn't start writing with an eye toward publication. I had this vague idea I'd try it someday, but mostly I wrote for my own pleasure. I spent a lot of years writing a lot of rubbish, and it was all excellent practice, and improved my craft, and now (at 50) I'm actually getting somewhere professionally. Would you have told me, when I was 22 and got a mannered and self-conscious short story summarily rejected by Analog, that I should quit before I wasted my life?

Hapax Legomenon · Dec 3, 2014

lizmonster said:
There's truth in this - but the trouble is, how do you tell? I can't look at someone whose writing is problematic today and tell them that in ten years they'll still suck, so they should give up. We all make choices in life that turn out to have been wrong, and it's not for me to try to dictate someone else's future. What's worse: trying, and figuring out after ten years that it's the wrong choice; or giving up and always wondering if maybe it might have worked out?

Do it or don’t do it — you will regret both.
- Søren Kierkegaard

Phaeal · Dec 3, 2014

If you don't enjoy writing, you should give it up whether you're "successful" or not.

Also, I KNEW I shouldn't have let that damn sheep talk me into going to his apartment to look at his etchings. Sheep are such dogs.

buz · Dec 3, 2014

I kinda don't think anyone should dictate whether people they don't know should or should not give up on something with the means of only generalized blanket statements to guide them.

Failure might be a stepping stone to success or it might just lead nowhere. Things don't work in a defined trajectory. But it is true that not trying will definitely result in nothing, whereas trying might, and that's kind of all there is to it, IMO. You keep trying or you don't, depending on what is more painful (or, perhaps, enjoyable).

Whether you do or don't keep trying might be a decision that is more complicated than whether you "enjoy" something (what does that mean, exactly? That might be an obtuse question, but I find concepts like "happy" and "enjoyment" and "sad" and stuff to be kind of murky when they are applied to non-fleeting states; maybe I'm just a lunatic type person though

). Likewise it might be more complicated than whether you're good at it, or whether you're ever likely to be good; maybe it has to do with publishing or not publishing instead; maybe it's to do with mental states and places in life and so on.

Failure does not necessarily mean eternal failure. Non-enjoyment might also not mean eternal non-enjoyment. Sucking might not mean eternal sucking. And being overlooked by publishers might not mean eternal overlooking.

But it might.

Thing is, no one knows; you can't put a time limit or emotional requirement or anything else on these things for someone else. In the end, it's all down to what a person needs, and that has a lot of factors going into it.

If moving on leaves one happier than keeping on, then maybe moving on is best. If not, then maybe sticking for a while is best. I can't say for someone else. All this "should quit/shouldn't quit" stuff as applied to others doesn't really make sense to me. Giving up might be the right thing to do sometimes, and sometimes it isn't; but whether it is or not is highly personal, IMO.

Kylabelle · Dec 3, 2014

^Wise words.

It's good to not let one failure convince you of anything conclusive, generally, but beyond that? It's all highly individual, how and why to choose to continue in a risky endeavor such as writing.

robjvargas · Dec 3, 2014

buzhidao said:
I kinda don't think anyone should dictate whether people they don't know should or should not give up on something with the means of only generalized blanket statements to guide them.

For whatever it's worth, that wasn't my intent. At the same time, I don't think anyone accused me of that.

Instead of being intended as some kind of overarching piece of advice, I was simply responding to a kind of vague feeling I was getting seeing what seemed to be a bit of a wave of, "should I give up? My writing stinks" posts across several forums.

Each of us has to make our own decisions about when to give up. But I was rebelling just a little bit over the idea that bad writing means hang it up.

I mean, what does that mean? I always remember Harrison Ford's story about one of his first roles in a movie, as a hotel busboy calling out a message for some character. He got a lecture about how one of the stars of that time would have done the role, and everyone could see, "That's a star!"

Harrison Ford reported being confused. "I thought I was supposed to be a busboy!"

I sometimes feel that there's some of that in these give-up threads. I didn't want to say that a writer should do this or should not do that. I did, however, want to get out the idea that we grow by stretching ourselves beyond where we're ready to be, sometimes failing, and trying again.

It's okay to faceplant every once in a while. :e2bike2:

Ken · Dec 3, 2014

Good OP. Positive and upbeat. Nice change of pace from the usual fare.

That, "quitters never win and winners never quit," applies. So snap to it AWers !

Laer Carroll · Dec 3, 2014

My writing today is sometimes brilliant and usually quite good. But it took a lot of practice to get here, and lots of bad writing which I slowly improved little by little.

My first big breakthrough was to quit trying for perfection. I rarely got beyond one or two paragraphs because nothing is ever PERFECT. I then began trying for BETTER. And so began to succeed.

rwm4768 · Dec 3, 2014

It amazes me how many people expect to churn out perfection so soon. If it were that easy, everyone would be doing it. In writing, I'm not sure there is such a thing as perfection. You can approach it, but you never quite get there (it's like Calculus).

That's why I don't slave over every word as I'm writing a first draft. I focus on telling the story, even when I feel like the writing isn't very good. Usually, when I go back to edit, I find out that my bad writing just needed a few small tweaks. For me, it's easier to do that during the editing process.

buz · Dec 3, 2014

robjvargas said:
For whatever it's worth, that wasn't my intent. At the same time, I don't think anyone accused me of that.

No; the thread just kinda went its own way, as they tend to do.

Instead of being intended as some kind of overarching piece of advice, I was simply responding to a kind of vague feeling I was getting seeing what seemed to be a bit of a wave of, "should I give up? My writing stinks" posts across several forums.

Each of us has to make our own decisions about when to give up. But I was rebelling just a little bit over the idea that bad writing means hang it up.

Do people advocate hanging it up? I mean, I agree with you. Sucking isn't a blinking stop sign

I sometimes feel that there's some of that in these give-up threads. I didn't want to say that a writer should do this or should not do that. I did, however, want to get out the idea that we grow by stretching ourselves beyond where we're ready to be, sometimes failing, and trying again.

It's okay to faceplant every once in a while.

That is true. I think it's natural to wonder about giving up, to get to that place. It's disheartening to suck at something, sometimes. And I think that, since most of us aren't children, sucking becomes harder to accept. I mean, I've sucked at stuff my whole life, right? I'M SUPPOSED TO STOP EVENTUALLY

But yeah. *sigh* Some sucking has to be put up with, for a lot of us.

Flicka · Dec 3, 2014

In general, I think it's less about objectively "I suck" and the emotional experience of "I suck". The first means maybe you should give up (or try to get better), but the second, you shouldn't listen to. The problem is distinguishing the two - and the people who experience number 2 are not always the ones who actually suck, and the ones who actually terminally suck aren't always aware of it...

Like some of you say, you obviously have to be realistic as well. But I think it's really hard to really work hard at something and not achieve a fair degree of skill. If you don't, it's usually because you don't learn from your mistakes. As for success in terms of career though, I'm not sure it always correlates with your skill (in writing or otherwise), so it is by no means a given.

Now I'm going to basically repost something (with a few changes) I wrote in a another thread a while back on sucking.

We all suck at new things. Ever see a toddler try to walk? Hear one try to talk? If they didn't persist in trying, they'd never learn. Doing something badly, over and over again, and evaluating why it went wrong is how you get better.

The good thing about being a toddler, though, is that you have pretty low expectations of your own performance. As adults (or young adults) we tend to compare ourselves with people who've done whatever it is we want to do for years and years. Imagine if a toddler tried to walk, looked at a professional ballet dancer and went "Why can't I do that?" And yet, that ballet dancer was once a toddler who kept falling over.

I think we are all at one point toddler writers. If you are new to writing and feel like you keep tripping over your own feet, you are not alone. It's perfectly normal. In fact, I think even very skilled writers always feel a bit like this. You are always trying to accomplish an idea that is much better than your skills. That frustration is what spurs many writers to go the extra mile in their writing. You will probably feel like a four-year-old with crayons trying to draw the Mona Lisa occasionally all through your career. It is also normal.

What you can do not to be overwhelmed by your own suckage, is to, first of all, tailor your expectations to your current skill level. You will have to serve your apprentice years. This means you will have to be ready to read widely and write a lot that may never lead to anything. Try not to focus on the end result as much as your growth. As long as you keep developing and improving, you'll get there in the end, but it will take time.

Regrettably, there are no shortcuts. It takes time and hard work. I don't know anyone who is any good at anything (including but not limited to writing, guitar playing, drawing, competition law, plumbing and ballet dancing) who didn't work hard for a long time before achieving that skill level. It will be dreary and occasionally it will completely suck and if you don't love it enough, it may not be worth the effort. But there is no getting around the effort, and if you persist, you will get there.

blacbird · Dec 4, 2014

I don't need nobody's permission to screw up. I can do it all by myself, thank you.

caw

Permission to Screw Up: Granted

robjvargas

Parametric

Jamesaritchie

lizmonster

Possibly A Mermaid Queen

Michael Davis

Jamesaritchie

RedWombat

Runs With Scissors

Jamesaritchie

Hapax Legomenon

ap123

Twitching

CrastersBabies

Burninator!

Hapax Legomenon

ap123

Twitching

lizmonster

Possibly A Mermaid Queen

Hapax Legomenon

Phaeal

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

buz

edits all posts at least four times

Kylabelle

unaccounted for

robjvargas

Ken

Laer Carroll

Aerospace engineer turned writer

rwm4768

practical experience, FTW

buz

edits all posts at least four times

Flicka

Dull Old Person

blacbird