On Failure

One of my favorite gifts from childhood was a create-your-own story kit. It was a perfectly packaged set of pages with designated spaces to pen the world's next bestseller and illustrate pictures to go along with it. Then all you had to do was ship it to company headquarters, and—viola! Within 5 to 7 business days (okay, it was the early 2000s, so maybe longer), your book would be "published" and returned to you with a hard cover, glossy numbered pages, and, best of all, your name on the front.

I spent hours, then weeks, then months, attempting to craft the perfect story. I agonized over the plot, the characters, and whether to use colored pencils or markers for my accompanying illustrations.

I looked to my very first journal—silver metallic cover with black pages that could only be marked upon with neon gel pen—for inspiration. I had been furiously cataloging the whims of my imagination since I was old enough to know how to write. Mostly, though, the stories found in those pages were tales of folks who desperately wanted a slice of pie, or of a dog who was bad, then mad, then glad. (I recognized a whole lot of my first 100 sight words in there.)

This is your shot, my 8-year-old overachiever brain insisted. Don't blow it.

I wanted my debut novel to be an absolute hit. I laid awake at night wondering whether the story would be compelling enough; if the owners of what was most certainly a toy company and not a legitimate publishing house would contact me directly and tell me that they needed to print more than just one copy so they could line the shelves of libraries and bookstores with my poetic brilliance.

In the end, I never sent it in. My fear of failure crippled me. My marriage to perfection was a toxic one—doomed from the start.

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The rejection email came last week—short and to the point. It is not my first, nor will it be my last. But it was the farthest I've ever gotten in the publishing process with an actual literary agent. The traction felt tangible; hopeful, even.

I wanted it so bad I could taste it. I still do.

But my knee-jerk reaction was to believe that one agent's opinion was the end of the road for my book. If it's not good enough for her, it's probably a sign. What if I'm the only one who thinks this story is important? When is it time to cut my losses and move on? 

Turns out that terrified 8-year-old kid still lives inside of this 31-year-old body.

I wonder why fear of failure immobilizes so many of us, especially in the cases when we are the only ones who know that we have "failed". It's easier to just not try; to shield ourselves from the possibility of an outside force telling us that we are not good enough, strong enough, smart enough, able enough. Allowing somebody else to put a megaphone to the relentless inner voice we already carry.

In 2022, I sat down at my laptop in a flurry of emotion and explicit clarity. I had been writing some version of my memoir for the previous five years and gotten nowhere. Well-meaning friends and mentors suggested that I try fiction, or possibly pursuing a career as a copywriter to get my name out there.

But I knew that I didn't want to write for someone else; that even if I was the only one who believed in this particular story, at least somebody did.

That day, I wrote frantic, messy sentences:

I don’t want to write a novel. I can't wrap my head around fiction. There is a story inside of me. I have to write it. And I’m terrified that it’s not going to be good enough. I’m scared shitless that no one will care. But maybe that’s not the point. Maybe it’s for me. Maybe that’s enough. To honor my inner knowing. To be accountable to myself and nothing more. 

I'm still grateful for those vulnerable, uncrafted words. I saved them in a file on my computer, and I return to them frequently. On days like this one, when I find it hard to keep going; to be the only one fighting tirelessly for this thing I so fervently believe in.

This process is brutal, but it's also teaching me a valuable lesson: that it's okay if other people don't understand my dream. It isn't for them. It's for me. It's for that anxiety-ridden third-grader who never got to hold her own book in her hands because she was too afraid to try.

And this time, I won't let her down.