The Other Side of Failure

For the past few weeks I've been putting considerably more effort into long-form prose writing, commiting to at least an hour a day of pure writing (no blogging, no images) on my laptop at night or in a coffee shop. This steady practice began to produce results in the form of two longer written works, one of which became a baudy little story about a girl living in Buffalo around the start of the war who has crazed interactions with college professors, anti-war activists, overweight writing addicts, homeless men, a cable-access show called "It's Bassin' Time", and three boys in a band who lived upstairs. The problem was that, because I was working on it every day, yet was unable to keep track of the myriad plot threads my fevered A.D.D. mind would generate faster than most people flip through TV channels, the things got out of control very quickly. Yet another attempt at writing a novel (which seem to occur every six months) had crashed and burned, and yet for the first time, this was ok.

I take inspiration from Ternary Software CEO Brian Roberston, a consultant we had through here recently, whose innovative organization is actually excited when it fails at something, because they've framed it as a learning experience. To fail, and to fail gloriously, and to reflect on it: that's where true knowledge seems to come from.

In my own case, I've realized a few things about my writing. For one, no amount of writing is ever wasted. Even if a week's worth of one- or two-hour sessions doesn't amount to a novel (let alone a novel about Buffalo), the practice and the act of writing with consistency is of enormous benefit, as it trains the muscles of the writer to be disciplined enough to run with inspiration when it does strike: constant discipline translating into effortless art-making activity. To fail at writing a novel is no indication that one should refute this practice, as I so often dejectedly have before.

Second: awareness. The reason things got so out of control, it seems, is that I was not present with my writing. As in real life, every action taken in a novel creates a chain of karma which, according to Ken Wilber, we can define as "any action which requires further action". The whole of Buddhist teaching seems to consist of training oneself to be mindful in each moment so that one is not creating further karmic chains with each action, something which can also be trained in the writer. Know that each plot thread and personality quirk counts, and at a certain point will overwhelm you. Better, then, to keep things simple, stay within the logic of each character, write right into the heart of each moment. Fearing depth, and boredom, I often "change channels" within my stories, which is a notice to try a new tack: sticking with something.

Anyways, I won't bore you further. Suffice to say, for once I'm not throwing my entire career in the fire and wiping my hands with it: to fail, now it seems, is simply further proof that those who do succeed as writers are to be commended at every turn.