#WorkshopWednesday: Learning From Failure

Some books are more popular than others. Some books are so UNpopular that you wish you'd never written them. 

I kid. Mostly. 

One of the things it can be difficult to keep in mind with regard to authoring books is the tired, but very true adage about learning from our failures. Every failure does teach us something, if we're receptive to that knowledge. And even if it sucks to realize a failure was an entire year in the making. 

Publishing any book is a gamble: you're betting your time and effort against the likelihood of it selling. Traditionally published authors with book advances have a guaranteed cushion. Self-published authors are going all in without a safety net. Sometimes the gamble pays off, and sometimes it doesn't. That's when you have to start asking yourself the hard questions: why did this book fail? Is it market related? Trend related? Series related? Are there readers holding out on a series until it's complete, or is continuing a series just putting good money after bad? You have to take a step back and seriously self-reflect. Will more advertising help? Or was the book a lost cause from the get go?

That's the business part of learning from failure. My takeaways in this instance have been twofold: write shorter, snappier books in general, and end this series specifically. 

But the more hopeful, and useful, aspect of failure is that you can't become a better writer without completing books. 

I have always written. Short stories, scenes I wished were included in favorite TV shows, poems, contest entries. I was obviously a stronger writer at eighteen than I was at four, but I didn't notice marked improvement in my work until I started writing novels to completion. I started dozens in my high school and college years, and ran out of steam around ten-thousand words in. In every case, that initial burst of confidence would fade, and I'd talk myself out of continuing, certain the idea wasn't as worthy as I'd first assumed. In this way, I was unable to become a better writer. Anyone can start a story, but carrying it through the middle and end requires commitment. An introductory scene sets a stage, yes, but it doesn't highlight the growth of the characters, or teach you anything about plot, or pacing, or the subtle use of tension. It wasn't until I finished my very first novel - an early version of God Love Her that will never see the light of day - that I realized I could write a book, and only then could I set about learning how to write better books. 

I've written more than forty full-length novels at this point, and each one has taught me something different about craft. As we go through our Fearless read-along, I've cringed over some of my own words - and that's a good thing, because it means that I've grown, and that I'm a more skilled author, and that I can write with more authority in the future. 

There have been many days since its completion that I truly have wished I'd never written Lord Have Mercy. It took me a year, and I can't help but think about all the ways that time could have been spent more successfully. But even if it's a failure of a book, I learned a great deal about my own style in the process. I pushed myself, and I could feel the growth as it was happening. Writing that book helped me level up, which means the next book, and the next, will be better. 

If you ever find yourself writing something and you start to doubt whether it's worth finishing, I think it is. Even if you fail, finishing is where we learn the most.