Failure is Not Fatal

This started as a note, but I think it deserves it's own post. My reflections as a writer on the fear of "flopping".

Photo by the Author. London, England.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

―Winston S. Churchill

I was going to write this as a note, but I felt like it deserved it’s own post. I hope some of you may be able to relate.

I have been thinking a lot about the vulnerability of sharing my work as a writer. Sometimes, it’s easy. Like now, I really don’t care about how well this single post does on Substack. But when I share chapter snippets from my novel-in-progress, that changes everything.

My stomach flips. My jaw clenches. My hands shake.

It’s scary as hell.

Recently, I experimented with sharing my writing through a Romantasy short story challenge. You could say I was successful with that, because I placed in the top ten out of the 1,100 entries. However, that didn’t make me feel any better about sharing my WIP with the world. A 90,000 novel is a whole different ball game than a 2,000 word short story.

I thought that completing my first draft would be this huge monumental thing for me. Instead, it felt like simply the first 5k of a marathon (I recently participated in the London marathon, so the running analogy is fresh in my brain). The main characters have been floating around in my head for nearly a year. In February of this year, I finally began the story: a satirical romance about two best friends who get magically caught in a bad Romantasy manuscript (cue Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”).

The night that I finally discovered the perfect story for my FMC and MMC, I sat straight up on the couch while my husband and I watched TV and said: “Ah, I’ve got it!”

Since that moment, the story hasn’t left me alone. At one point, I convinced myself to abandon it, that it will never work. I still don’t know if it will “work”. It could be a total flop. However, there’s this little voice that whispers from the back recesses of my OCD brain (it sounds like Ted Lasso, of course):

“What if it isn’t?”

So I keep revising. I’ve done three chapters so far. My husband has patiently allowed me to read the entire rough draft out loud to him. We have discussed plot inconsistencies and potential issues that could be confusing. He has back ups of my drafts so if I ever delete them, they still exist somewhere. I joined a writer’s circle of wonderful humans that I’ve never met in person, but have read some of my most treasured work.

It’s scary. Getting feedback is hard for me. I’m not saying it’s supposed to be easy. But especially as a neurodivergent individual, I often find myself questioning everything. It is so easy for me to believe that if my writing isn’t wildly popular or adored by every reader, that it means I am not good enough as a human. Logically, I know that’s not true. But it’s the thought that haunts me every time I open my computer.

Now, every time I prepare to write, I tell myself:

"In the long run, no one’s opinion of you really matters. Write what you want, because this is your story to tell. No one else can tell it like you can.”

It could be cheesy. It could be terrible. It could be a steaming hot dumpster fire.

But maybe, just maybe, that’s better than it never existing.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I hope this might possibly be encouraging to some of you. Failing is a part of the process. And sometimes, failure is just a redirection. Keep creating. Keep showing the world the unique perspective that only YOU can.

I believe in you!