When you write, you fail.
Whether it’s a failed post that didn’t get any views, a failed book that made fewer sales than anticipated, or failure to start making income when you thought you would.
We all fail.
Here’s how renowned writers say you should pick yourself back up.
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Maya Angelou
Author of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient in 2011
You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.
Failure teaches us who we are.
People say something similar about money. Some falsely believe that money makes people evil, but money amplifies what is already there. If you weren’t a good person to start with, money only makes that more clear.
Failure is similar.
If you were already someone who shied away from the spotlight, failing might amplify your inability to stand out. It might make you feel smaller than you originally felt.
But Angelou says we need failure in order to grow.
The temptation is to look at our failures and run for the hills, but instead, we should look failure in the eyes, seeing who we can become after we fail.
Failure will continue to come. We are made by how we overcome it.
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Oscar Wilde
Author of the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray
What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.
I applied for graduate school to write poetry and didn’t get in.
It’s a pretty big failure for my writing career.
But getting into a graduate program would’ve prevented me from learning about the already vibrant world of online writing, where people make a living from their words, without additional school.
We go through trials that make or break us. When they break us, we can be a dog with a broken leg, limping and looking for sympathy. Or we can let them make us and hold our head higher than before.
Some failures lead you out of situations you wouldn’t’ve wanted to be in.
Remember that.
John Keats
Renowned poet, one of the Big 3 Romantic Poets
Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.
Our view of failure tends to be problematic.
We look at failure as if it is the epitome of unsuccess.
But Keats encourages us to look at failure with positivity. In fact, we should seek out failure in order to show us what to avoid writing.
When I wrote a post analyzing my stats on Medium, Tim J. Schroeder complimented me saying that it was so good to see someone with a positive relationship with their results and shortcomings.
Use failure to determine where to take your writing next.
Do more of what works, do less of what doesn’t.
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F. Scott Fitzgerald
Author of The Great Gatsby, later turned into an award-winning film
In any case you mustn’t confuse a single failure with a final defeat.
Losing doesn’t make you a loser.
Professional football and basketball players often lose games. But if they attached their losses to their identity, they would be in a world of pain. Because the person looking at them in the mirror would be a failure, a loser, a piece of garbage that missed the trash can.
We know this isn’t true. We’ve heard the phrase, “win some, lose some.”
This would then mean that our losses don’t have to be our letdown. Instead, we can look at losses as opportunities for improvement. As Fitzgerald says, a single failure is not a final defeat.
Unless you allow it to be by never trying again.
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Charles Dickens
Author of over 15 novels, including Great Expectations and Oliver Twist
I must be taken as I have been made. The success is not mine, the failure is not mine, but the two together make me.
We are a combination of both our wild successes and our devastating defeats.
So no, life is not characterized by failure, but it isn’t characterized by success either. Both are necessary to be a human being.
Think about it.
What emotions do you have towards people who brag all the time?
They seem unreal, on a pedestal, and you’re immediately turned off by them. But the same thing happens with Sir Mopes-a-Lot who is always down in the dumps and can’t ever get their life together.
We are a combination of these two sides.
Allowing them to balance each other out makes us likable, approachable human beings.
And even better writers.
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For more posts about success, failure, and problems that writers have, join The Writer’s Mindset.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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