To be unsure whether that there are any benefits to 'failure?'

[incidentalaccident]

Hello everybody. I have been reading a lot about failure lately, podcasts etc. The general theme seems to be that failure can be positive as a way to learn and as a route to success. I have always been unsure about that because it feels like a fairly middle-class sort of approach, where failure is OK because there is a financial safety net. Anyway, full disclosure, I am middle-class and I think I am about to fail and although this is not a threat to income as such, I don't think I have a psychological safety net. In brief, I am about to finish a book, which will be published, and I think it's possibly quite shit. If/when it 'fails,' the failure could be vaguely public (to colleagues and peers) and I am absolutely terrified. I know this is so self-obsessed and self-indulgent - there are so many people struggling with incomparably bigger problems than this one. But I am trying to think of upsides of this and I am struggling. AIBU and is anyone prepared to discuss this with me and tell me about their failures?! Or just to get over myself.

I don’t know if this is helpful, but some of my favourite authors have first books that are a bit shit. For example, I’m not at all a fan of early Terry Pratchett books and I love his later ones. Even the authors who had a hit with their first book often had prior writing experience somehow. If I were in your shoes, I’d take heart from that. It takes time, patience and courage to learn your craft. This is step 1. If it is a bit shit, well, step 2 will be better. And think how good step 8 might be! Good luck.

Brene Brown and Carol Dweck write about failing, you may be interested.

Ok so it’s shit. What’s the worse that can happen? I imagine the ripple it will make in the world will be quite tiny in the whole scheme of things. Probably comparable with coming out of the toilet with your skirt tucked into your knickers. You never know… it might be good!!

Thank you both! Yes to could try reading Berne brown who has not failed!! Though that’s the paradox I guess.

You're about to be a published writer! That's a massive achievement. I published a children's poetry book and recently made about £2 in sales 😆

But I've got a book for sale on amazon so I'm dead chuffed.

@divebar2021 - haha, yes. I mean it would make a tiny ripple if it's good, so I suppose the ripple would be tinier if it's as shit as I think. It's not fiction by the way. Anyway .... I mean this is really all about my ego isn't it. I need to work on that.

and congrats @ungoogled. I expect to make about £1. I'm not in it for the sales. Thankfully.

Firstly, it’s probably not shit.
But if it is, Shakespeare’s first plays were shit. And if anyone tells you to your face it’s shit, there’s the simple “oh, is yours better? May I read it?” response.

Yes, like that @attagirrrrl seeing as writing it has been a monumental effort, including as I struggle with self-doubt, I guess I could approach that as the achievement.

Failure (like doing badly in an exam at school for instance) might be just the kick up the arse you need in order to make you pull your socks up and work harder.

For some people though, I can imagine it would be demoralising if they have already tried their best.

As my late DM used to say: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again".

Way better to try and fail, than not to try at all. I've failed at all sort of things in life but I always console myself with that thought. To be fair most people won't think your failure is anywhere near as important as it seems to you. I'd also question how you are measuring success. If it is published surely that is a level of success. You have done the best you can. What comes next is completely out of your control.

To be blunt, it doing well or badly has very little to do with its quality.

There are plenty of great books that were not popular when they were released. There are many many more truly dreadful books that have flown off the shelves. Imo, it's about 30% luck, 30% who you are, 39% zeitgeist and 1% quality!

You have succeeded in completing a very onerous task (finding a publisher I mean - writing is often the easiest bit!), and you've done it without crushing, stepping on or otherwise hurting anyone else. Bloody well done, say I.

You have succeeded in writing a book which will be published! That's wonderful success.

I knew someone whose book was never published, but they were chuffed to bits it was accepted by an agent.

Personally I would love to have written a book but have never got very far.

You could say, having successfully achieved your ambition of having a book published your next ambition is having a book published that you are completely pleased with.

(As an aside, my student loan was cancelled when I hit 50, because I had failed to ever earn enough money to reach the threshold to pay it back. Now that's a successful failure!)

@UnGoogled

You're about to be a published writer! That's a massive achievement. I published a children's poetry book and recently made about £2 in sales 😆

But I've got a book for sale on amazon so I'm dead chuffed.

This

Well done both of you, that's awesome regardless of how well it does.

I think it can help to look at all the steps it took to get to the end result too as there were clearly many successes along the way. Too often we only look at the end result to decide if we've done well. Often this is appropriate but sometimes not.

Well, I applied for about a 100 jobs this year (not an exaggeration, I counted them on a spreadsheet) and definitely felt like a failure at times when I didn’t get any of them, but I am in a very competitive field and having failed at things in the past and having ‘learned’ to fail at things meant that I kept trying and finally got a new job that I start in 3 months on a significantly higher salary and with more responsibilities.

Not all opportunities to fail are about financial risk but I am pretty MC.

I'm not an expert in this kind of thing at all, but a work related mentor I once had was great at this, and was the first person to really help m understand that all feedback is good and useful etc.

I think in your situation there are a couple of factors, one is that it may feel rather public and most people would prefer to fail in private. So you will need to have a think about what will make you most comfortable with this....is it to have a few stock phrases as responses, is it to minimise conversations about it and change the subject, is it to actually ask the commenter to engage in a nuanced conversation about what they think of the work and why.... Figuring out what works for you in terms of handling this more public aspect of it will serve you well in the future.

In terms of how this potential failure (and it may yet be a success!) can be a benefit to you, I think there are two parts to that. One is how to make your next book or future work 'better', if that is what is needed. What do you wish you had done differently and how are you preparing to do that next time? Secondly, I think there's a bit of self-analysis that could be of benefit in working out how you got to this point where you are having it published but you don't feel it's that great.... Are you overly self-critical? Did you allow yourself to get pushed into something by e.g. an agent or publisher that you now regret? Did you ignore feedback or even your own inner voice at any point saying 'try that again because it's not quite right'? Do you have to make a call between what you want to write and what others might want to read? How comfortable are you with that? There's so much you can learn from all of those in terms of doing things differently next time.

And still....you are about to be a published author and in my opinion, that shouldn't be called a failure at all. This could be the only thing you publish, and that's still more than almost everybody else manages. Or it could be a tentative first step on an exciting journey of achievement, and you'll look and realise that it was incredibly useful, even if it feels a bit uncomfortable right now. I think that's the kicked actually...we don't always get the benefit from our failures immediately, it's sort of a delayed compensation thing, you realise the benefit further down the line but it can still feel a bit rubbish at the time....that feels a bit unfair really!

Thanks for all these responses! I am proof reading at the same time and you are giving me the gentle kick up the arse I need!

@ibizan - good question. I am an academic and I was asked to write this book for non-academic audiences. I guess I want respect from my peers but there is a real danger that academics think it's not sufficiently academic and non-academics think it's incomprehensible. And that it could also be turgid nonsense. Or very derivative. In writing it, I am truly standing on the shoulders of giants to synthesise previous points into a coherent narrative about a particular problem and how to address it.

I suppose I need to recalibrate what I want and what I can hope for. It's on a subject I think matters politically so maybe if I can influence just one person's thinking, that would be something.

I really like @Ibizan wrote above.....if you're ready to engage in discussions about it, it will be a truly positive step.

(and still....it might not fail!)

Family saying- 'It's only them 'as does things 'as 'appens things'.
Roughly translated as things only happen because you did things.
Used when you tried and failed, or did something and were unappreciated or misunderstood. It is easy for nothing to go wrong or not to fail IF you never do or try anything. But that's not living.
You have written and published a book. Far more than most people have done!

After reading your update, I think you simply can't fail....you simply say to each audience type that it wasn't intended for them .

There's a grain of truth there, if you do receive criticism, you can certainly acknowledge that it's a very difficult balance to strike, and next time you might do xyz so that it resonates in a different way with audience a or b or whatever.

I do quite a bit of writing of technical content for a non-technical audience so I can somewhat relate to what you mean, but I am not at all academic so I think I don't worry about that side of it (and I'm not publishing a book!). There's actually tons you can learn from this....about how to do this differently next time, about why a particular subject might be so important but so difficult to position for a non-specialist audience.

For your specific situation it’s ok OP - you’ve gotten a lot further than other people and even well known authors have had books tank.
On général failure it depends on the type, magnitude and reaction to the failure….
The reason why it’s painted as a ‘positive’ is because people would otherwise be overwhelmed by the possibility and never even try. To try and fail is better then to never have tried.

I like the idea of adjusting my response depending on the audience. I suppose I should get the thing published first before I really go for these doomsday scenarios. I think I need to get control of my ego - it's just a book, it doesn't have to be THE book.

Hi @OP, I used to work on books like yours when I worked in publishing. Your book probably isn't shit but it's really hard to predict whether it will sell well or not. The worst case scenario is that it gets a few OK reviews but doesn't sell very well... but so what? You will still have made a contribution to world knowledge and you can include the book on your CV forever. Most academic books sell really badly so no one will give you a hard time about sales figures or think worse of you. Instead they will be impressed that you escaped your comfort zone to try something new.

I am currently "failing" in my acting career, in that I haven't had a paid job since Christmas 2019. Covid hasn't helped, of course, as I'm primarily a theatre actor!

I'm trying to "reframe" it as it being a really tough time for everyone in the arts, and at least I'm still getting auditions, but it's hard. I'm scared if nothing comes up soon I'll get sacked by my agent, and that would be a humiliating (and somewhat public) failure.

So no advice but lots of empathy (and best wishes for the book) here!