On the importance of "failing"

The summer of text

This summer, I was a writing machine. I completely rewrote Godkillers and got it to my beta. I wrote 65k words of Mistress of Death from scratch, including 30k over the last three weeks. I wrote probably a dozen short stories.

But C.J.! You said this was about failing!

Shh I’m getting there.

Writer’s block

The other day when I went to start writing again I could feel it. That sick feeling in my body. The block in my mind. The anxiety. I closed the document.

No, no! I thought. I have writer’s block!

Yes, friends. I legitimately thought I had writer’s block. I thought I was stuck. I thought I needed juicing up.

Uh nope it was burnout

Then someone pointed out to me uh C.J. you’ve been writing like crazy for months, maybe you need a break?

But I’d had a streak on my Pacemaker for three weeks straight! Surely I could at least cobble off 40 words to keep my streak alive.

And then what? I’d do it the next day and the next day, forcing out trash to stay alive on an app that was meant to be self-directed?

Making myself “fail”

So I dug into my psychology knowledge. What would I tell a client here?

I’d tell them to fail. I’d tell them to miss a day. On purpose. To feel that sense of “failing” and to realize that it wasn’t the end of the world.

So I did it. I didn’t write yesterday. My Pacemaker streak is gone. My little box is gray. And you know what? I’m still alive. I read some of a novel for the first time in ages. And I’m feeling more refreshed.

What’s the punchline?

We, as writers, are so achievement oriented, so programmed to succeed, that when we take breaks, it can feel like failure. But that’s why I put failure in quotes. Because it’s not failure. It’s downtime. It’s rest. It’s recovery. It’s a bad day. Whatever it is, we need it to restore us so we can move on.

Moral of the story? Sprinkle some “failure” into your life. Allow yourself a day off. Let yourself miss that short story deadline (not your contracted deadlines!).

It’ll help you realize that “failure” isn’t so bad after all.