Facing Failure and Rejection ⛔

Facing failure and rejection is a big part of a writer’s life, and they’re both hard to talk about. I’ve had my fair share. It sucks.

I’ve never been good at dealing with failure or rejection, so I do what I can to avoid it, including not finishing things, not sending out queries, or if I do, I stop after a handful of rejections or those cricket-silences.

They say you just need one ‘yes,’ but it’s hard to take 20, 200, or 2,000 rejections. It stymies motivation and reduces access to inspiration.

Over time, you’d think we’d all get used to it, grow thicker skins, but I don’t know anyone who takes rejection well. We just learn to take it and continue to imagine a yes around the corner. And on the days we can’t imagine that yes—by writing toward it, sending out queries, or applying to contests or residences—we spend a few days, weeks, months, possibly years feeling like a failure.

Have you noticed that we love talking about failure after someone has achieved success? But we hide it away shamefully until that success provides some relief and then we’re finally allowed to talk about how hard it was leading up to this moment of finally having our work seen and appreciated. There are plenty of 40-year “overnight” successes. What about the 39-year failures? Why aren’t we allowed to talk about those? And if we permit ourselves, how do we do it?

Recently, thanks to my friend and fellow writer, Shirley R. (@canadianshirley on IG), I came across a young artist, Eyvan Collins, trying a unique way of having this type of conversation by creating a Museum of Personal Failure.

Inspired by two relationship failures, Eyvan put out a call to artists for “artifacts of personal failure” and conceptualized “an experiment in unconcealment.”

Taking form as a pop-up museum in one of the empty stores at the far-from-successful Kingsgate Mall in East Vancouver, the exhibit is very home-grown and interactive. Viewers are invited to write on recipe cards or post-it notes in different places, adding their own notes about personal failures. People wrote about relationships, failed driving tests, not getting into schools, getting fired from jobs, not fulfilling dreams, including many about writing.

The “Wall of Rejection” was full of mostly anonymous confessions, and I was touched by some viewers’ choices to respond to another’s note with empathy and kindness, which show that the willingness to expose those tender places we try to keep hidden are, in fact, keys to connection and self-acceptance.

Eyvan’s mimeograph for the museum states: “If anything nearing a coherent distillation or thesis could be found, it might be this: by some strange force, people are constantly in pursuit of creating something that does not yet exist—be it an object, a consequence, a self in some form—and we sometimes simply cannot do it.”

Contributing artists submitted unfinished manuscripts, car parts from a failed repair, stabbed paintings, an old wedding dress, post-divorce, presented in a moving box to indicate a letting go of old fairy tales.

One unusual piece included a dead tarantula in a jar with a story about woman’s failed attempt to care for it adequately, a failure that haunted her for years (photo with her story below).

Apparently someone sent over an abandoned, barely alive aloe plant with an invitation for anyone interested to adopt it—and by the time I visited someone had left a note saying they’d taken it home, meaning that at least one “failure” may yet have its redemption.

I ended up having a thoughtful conversation with Eyvan, both curator and contributing artist. I asked him whether his ideas about failure had changed much throughout the process of putting the show together and what he thought about shame’s relationship to failure. One idea that has stayed with me has to do with shame being related to not having lived up to our own personal expectations. That we create a version of ourselves we’d like to be and when we don’t match up with it—in our own eyes and what we perceive as the eyes of the world—we feel a sense of failure and even shame. This sense of failure and shame lives on because of the bond between the missed vision, the ideal version of self we’re still attached to, and the self we are now. For some, a sea of disappointment lies in between, deep enough to drown in. Considering failure as a kind of glue that bonds us to perhaps outdated images of ourselves still cursing the future and casting regret on the past has stirred up some other thoughts I intend to explore over the next while.

We are each, of course, much more than any one of our failures, but we are also made up of those too. Our early visions for ourselves were full of hope and aspiration and faith that we’d succeed. But success is never guaranteed. And failures teach us many things. Failure is a kind of forge, and if we can take the heat and carry on our spirits are tempered and enlarged.

My own sense of failure comes from believing I haven’t become the writer I once imagined I would be. I realize now that I developed more habits of avoiding rejection rather than overcoming it, and that’s on me. Sadly, rejection paired with regret doubly sucks. But perhaps now it’s time to look at that outdated version of myself that was born in the past that still has such a hold on my present and future. It’s time to update with kindness and appreciation for having had any aspirations at all.

None of us are immune to the heat of failure and the chill of rejection. Even Claude Monet once said, “My life has been nothing but a failure, and all that’s left for me to do is to destroy my paintings before I disappear.”

So let’s talk about rejection and failure more openly. We needn’t wallow in it, but we can admit it’s a big part of the creative path, and it’s not entirely our fault. Wanting to share one’s gifts with the world is a good thing, a brave thing. The world may only offer up crickets most of the time, and occasionally that will make sense, but most of the time it won’t, and there won’t be much you can do about it. Call up a friend, commiserate and comfort, and then check in about your habits of mind and action when it comes to sharing what you write. Persistent habits of avoiding rejection guarantee failure. But persistent creativity and courageously sending work out into the world keeps the door of hope ajar.

The Museum of Personal Failure reveals that you can sometimes make art out of failure, but if you reject the inevitability of creative failure, you won’t be able to make art.

By the way, the museum is temporary—open only from Jan 24th to Feb 3rd— and maybe that aspect of its form can remind us that failures can be temporary too, if we determine never to give up. As Ray Bradbury once said, “You fail only if you stop writing.”

Uncertainty Springs Eternal 🌸

Even in uncertain times spring shows up. Cherry blossoms open to the sun, green shoots rise up from the dark earth, birdsong fills the air. Nature reminds us that life is change. Even in uncertain times.

And we are living them, aren’t we? We all feel it, globally and personally. And we’re all trained to do something about our feelings, even if we don’t know what that doing should be. But we also know that acting impulsively often has unwelcome consequences—an angry email sent too soon is regretted later, a piece of writing we don’t like is shredded or burned before its potential is revealed. A hot emotion craves release yet often leaves destruction its wake. That old advice to take a deep breath and count to ten? It’s good. Especially in uncertain times.

With all the chaos streaming around us, let’s make a conscious decision to not add to it. That takes some work. We need to be extra vigilante about recognizing our triggers and have constructive ways to deal with them; we need to be more aware that others feel just like us, maybe worse, and we must tolerate that and, on our good days, do something positive to uplift others; we also need to make extra room for what nourishes and sustains us personally. It’s not a time to go without good thoughts, words, and deeds. The extra effort will pay off in the moment and later.

So don’t give in to fear; expand courage. Don’t succumb to hate; rise to love and tolerance. Don’t surrender to despair; stand with possibility and vision.

As a writer you have the tools to do this at your fingertips— you can take the coldness of your despair and the heat of your rage to the page. Your hands can be channels of insight rather than fists of might. Don’t they say the pen is mightier than the sword? Ideas last longer than bruises.

I don’t mean to sound Pollyannaish here. Though I do believe writing is powerful action—words galvanize people to do both good and ill—other actions are no doubt required now too—voting, marching, engaging in difficult conversations with people who think differently (and consider reviewing Timothy Snyder's Twenty Lessons from On Tyranny).

Remember that you, as a writer, are trained to deal with uncertainty and chaos thanks to your practice of repeatedly facing the blank page. What does the blank page teach us? That the story isn’t fully written yet. In its blankness lies possibility, if we have the vision for it. Don’t sacrifice that vision to the storms of chaos. Preserve it, like the stillness in the eye of a storm. Purge your inner chaos onto the page—burn or shred that one if you want—and let the uncertainty of the times trigger not only fear, anger, and despair but also wisdom, love, vision, and tolerance.

The story’s still being written. Which part are you writing?

"The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next." 

~ Ursula K. LeGuin ~

“For the times they are a-changin'.”

~ Bob Dylan ~

P.S. The writings and creations of others can uplift, soothe, and strengthen in these times. Two Buddhist-themed books I turn to: Pema Chodron’s, Comfortable with Uncertainty and The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts. I also like to reread Paul Coelho’s, The Alchemist, and Siddhartha, by Herman Hesse now and again.

And just last week I watched the Oscar-winning animated feature, Flow, by Latvian director, Gints Zilbalodis. See this film! The literal wordlessness of it was wonderfully calming. Another, older favourite Oscar-winning animated feature is Hayao Miyazaki’s, Spirited Away—surreal, mystical, and heartfelt. Not wordless but wonderfully weird. (Japanese with English dubbing.)