It’s fascinating to find what it is in a character that drives them – but even more interesting to find what it is that drives them to attempt something again and again. There’s inherently more drama to failure. Success doesn’t require change, success doesn’t make us care about a character. Failure – if done right, on the page and off – results in change. Article contentĪs a writer, failure, and characters who fail are far more interesting than success. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. And while Marilyn Bell’s story of besting Lake Ontario captured me, I feel the poems in Arguments with the Lake really came to life when I found the story of her shadowy failure Shirley Campbell, who tried to swim the lake twice and failed, coming within a mile of finishing both times. In Above All Things, George Mallory is a spectacular romantic failure – trying time after time to summit Everest. In the last few years, though, I’ve spent my time in the heads of ambitious failures, and it’s made me rethink my own stance in a way that inspirational posters never could.

Then with publication – success! – you open yourself up to whole other levels of rejection and failure: failure to make sales, poor reviews, mean people on the internet. You nurse your pride in public and get back to work. Please try again Article contentīut a writer’s life is filled with rejection, definitely a small form of failure, but it’s a failure that’s personal and quiet – a letter arriving in your SASE, an email.

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