Can Failure Be Avoided?

Of late I've been freaking out. I'm scared to death my book is going to sink, people are going to laugh at me and I'll have to slink away to hide in the shadows of the blogosphere. I also am afraid I'm not going to be able to write a decent follow up book to Finding Meara.

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In other words, I'm scared I'm going to fail.

"Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out." Benjamin Franklin

Thanks, Ben. Part of me seized when I read this quote. Does he mean me, right now? Am I going to know failure? But then I caught on to how freeing it can be to embrace failure. Sure, we'll all know failure at some time, which means we might as well get on with it all. If we fail, we just do something different next time. No biggie.

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." Winston Churchill

Excellent point, Winston. Even if we do succeed once, there is no guarantee that we won't ever fail again. And no one is going to take away our respective birthdays if we do fail. In the grand scheme of things, at least for me, the stakes of writing aren't all that high. My ego is at risk, but that's about all.

"Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure." Confucius

The courage to continue on and keep moving forward becomes the previous preparation Confucius is talking about. We get better, we learn new things and can try different methods to accomplish that for which we are working so hard.

So I guess the answer is no, the option of failure can not be avoided.  But we need to be courageous and try, anyway. Otherwise, it's guaranteed we will never experience success.

How do you handle the fear of failure?

Three Reasons Why Revision Make Me Nervous

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For those of you who have written novels and gone through the revision process, this might seem like a silly post.  Why on earth would revisions make a person nervous?

The answer (in my case) is threefold:

1.  It begins with my personality.  Besides the fact that being prone to anxiety runs in the Italian side of my family, I was informed several years ago by a colleague that I am an "external processor," rather than an "internal processor."  That means that I have to talk my thoughts out, often to another person, to give them form and structure.  (Thank God my husband is extremely patient.)

My problem is that I'm not to the point where I am ready to show any writer friends the manuscript, and my husband isn't versed in the craft of writing and revising fiction. I can't even use him as a beta-reader, because he hates reading in first-person.  This inability to really talk out my thoughts and concerns leaves me a little befuddled.  I can't seem to make a decision that I don't doubt.  Which leads to reason number two...

2.  I am no longer working on the first-draft.  That means I don't have permission anymore to make crap.   I am supposed to clean up the first draft "mess" and shine it and make it all better.  The problem?  I have never written a novel before.  I have never revised a novel before.  I must still rely on instinct as to the process of revising, as well as what I'm doing to "fix" my novel.  Which leads to reason number three...

3. Remember that risk post a couple of weeks back?  Well, I am stretching and growing, both as a writer and as a person. It feels uncomfortable.

The simple truth, though, is if I don't get going, I am going to fail.  I will still have the first draft of Finding Meara, as well as any number of other first drafts, waiting to be revised when I'm eighty.  I will never know if my work was publishable or not, because I didn't give it a chance, because I was too afraid to revise wrong.  How silly does that sound!

Last night, I decided to just dig in.  If I don't get the process "right" and it takes me forever, such is life.  If I don't get started, it's going to take me forever, anyway.  I might as well get on with it.  And who knows, maybe it will all turn out okay!

Which kind of "processor" do you think you are?  Is there anything about the revision process that makes you nervous?