Fail Big

The most profound thing for me to say about failure comes from gaming. Big surprise, I know. It's from an old guild leader. He said: 

If you ain't dyin', you ain't tryin' 

 

Good advice in a situation where there are only pixels on the line, I suppose. But honestly, after the 12th wipe of a raid when you're trying to get everything just right, having the permission to relax into the ridiculousness of what you're attempting to accomplish changes EVERYTHING.

Any failure that is nonfatal is a chance to learn and grow. According to Carol Dweck (check out her book Mindset) how we view failure has a profound impact on whether we do succeed or fail over the course of life, love, and business. Those of us with a Fixed mindset are afraid of failure because we're certain it shows up our short-comings. Those of us with a Growth mindset might not relish failure, but we embrace it as an opportunity to learn something new. Not surprisingly a Growth mindset sets us up with far greater odds for success over time. And the good news is that you can change your mindset. It's in the book. I'm not rewriting it here. 

So maybe don't go looking for failure in say, cave diving, or free climbing El Capitan just yet. Scale the fail. Where physical safety isn't on the line, dare to fail big. The risk should be just enough to give you a little anxiety but not quite enough to keep you up nights. Not many, anyway. You're learning stuff. You need your sleep.

Epic fails, little fails...you've got to face them all.

I can’t count the number of things that I’ve failed at…and I’m a type A, will-do-everything-to-get-it-right kind of person! So it’s a little funny that I decided to become a writer because it’s upped my fails exponentially. 

Usually, when you do something over and over, you tend to get better at it. I guess you can say I’m getting better at failing, but it’s really one of those things that’s messy/ugly no matter how it happens. Life lessons are usually messy and ugly. 

My most recent read, I CAN’T MAKE THIS UP: LIFE LESSONS by Kevin Hart, ended up being pretty timely for this week. If you haven’t read it, it’s funny and inspirational, you should definitely check it out. Hart’s humor shines in this book, but it’s his outlook on life and the lessons he’s learned that really resonated with me. 

“One of the key factors for success—beyond work, talent, timing, relationships, and all the other qualities I’ve mentioned—is the glue that holds all of these together: commitment.” 

(page 160, I Can’t Make This Up)

Sticking with something isn’t a new idea, I wouldn’t be able to make such amazing pies if I’d given up after my first attempts. See the failed cake pic at the top! But it’s really nice to know that I’m not the only one struggling, failing over and over, and still tenaciously holding on, committing, to my dream. 

Because I agree with Kevin Hart, you have to commit if you want to succeed. You’ve got to be willing to put in the hours and energy all without the guarantee that you’ll get something in return. And you’ve got to be willing to do it again and again. 

So many try to write. Most don’t finish that first book. A good chuck that do, get some no’s and don’t do anything with it. Some will put out one book and then walk away. There’s a lot that goes into each individual decision, but I do know that if you give up on your dream there’s no way it’ll happen. 

Yes, you’ll hit times when you’re already down and get more rejections, more fails, and it seems like the entire universe is against you. There’s no easy fix. The best suggestion I have is to celebrate your friends successes. If you notice someone else is struggling, send them an emotional boost, or even a coffee! Lifting up someone else helps take the focus off your own problems, lightens your soul, and can give you energy to keep going. 

Stay committed. Don’t give up.

Dealing with the F word

You know Rudyard Kipling, the problematic imperialist poet dude? He wrote this poem called IF, and even though it's about how to be a man (because so much of pre-21st c. art is), bits of it speak to me. For instance:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;

You know what he's talking about there, right? It's a thing many writers know all too well. The F word. No, the other one: Fail. Failure. Bombing. Splatting. That thing NASA says isn't an option. Hell, I didn't know it was ever a choice. Like, I'd like to skip the fail today, thanks, can I have double beans instead? 

But it's always an option, frequently the only one. And if you've gotten a fresh serving of it, you aren't alone. Many of us experience failure. We almost court it when we query agents or submit to contests or publish a book that we're timidly hoping people will love, but our choosing to take the risk doesn't make failure hurt any less when it comes. Having courage doesn't mean you don't feel pain when you lose.

So, how do you deal with it? I guess a really important skill for a writer to have is the ability to bounce back, or as the poem says, "lose, and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss." Because that's what's we are expected to do: cheerfully just keep writing, and just keep risking. Excruciating review? Don't read it. Traditional publishing slams the gate on you? Move on to self-publishing. Sales are crap? Just change your name or genre or both and keep on keeping on.

Yes, the other really important skill to develop as a writer is internalizing all of your feelings. When you experience failure in this biz you cannot show anyone how much it hurts. You can't talk about it, not to your friends, not to your agent, and definitely not on social media (don't don't don't do this). You keep it secret, keep it safe. Otherwise you are whining, and that's not a thing writers do. We are optimistic happy people, damn it.

If that sounds like a load of fecal matter, well, it is. And if you're feeling the sting, I absolutely get you. You aren't alone, even if it feels like it. I believe you can come back from the F, that we can both come back, but it doesn't have to happen all at once, and it's okay to feel the way you feel. If it ever gets to be too much, look me up (twitter, facebook, email). I promise I won't tell you you're whining. 

Also, please remember this: Failure does not define you. You are worthy, and anybody says otherwise, I have another F word for them.

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p.s. -- A friend posted a link to this video of Michael Caine reading the poem IF, and it's ... well, it's Michael Caine. *hearteyes* I had to share.

Permission to Fail: Granted

Failure. Culturally, we're conditioned to avoid it at all costs. Public education punishes us for mistakes. Private education threatens us. Corporations terminate us. Society ridicules us. 

How dare we not be perfect?

Little wonder our ingrained fear of failure holds us back, particularly in a creative field where our work is subject to multiple layers of opinion. Yet we've chosen to be authors, we've chosen to subject ourselves to public censure in hopes we'll acquire accolades. Fans. Followers. Automatic buyers. 

Playing it safe doesn't get us what we want.

Fact is, we will fuck up. More than once. Quite often actually, if we're any good. It means we're learning, we're challenging our comfort levels, and we're widening our horizons. We're evolving as better people, better creators, better initiators, and better instigators of helping others grow. As long as we're not making the same mistakes because we repeat the same methods or remain in the same mindsets, then we shouldn't fear failure.

Sure, educating ourselves can be difficult. Being dragged for screwing up can be devastating. Have courage. Dare to learn from the mistakes. Dare to improve. Dare to try again. Dare to fail, because the feeling of overcoming that failure, of earning that accomplishment, that's soul-deep satisfaction. That's the stuff that makes life worth living.

There are certain readers of my work who've been delightful ~cough~ enough to say, "Hey, KAK, that first book is quite crap. Now that you're writing better stories, are you going to go back and fix the shitty one?"

No, I'm not. 

I absolutely can see the flaws in my early work. Yes, I cringe when I re-read it (and I do re-read it to double-check certain rules of the lore I created.) I'm not going to change that book because I consider it the starting point in a public record of improvement. I'm not ashamed of failing. Yes, it's taken me a long while to get comfortable with that notion. Now that I have, whoa, I'm so much happier with me. 

Say this aloud, "It's okay to fail."

Look at it this way: Reviews that say "this series just keeps getting better and better" are much preferred over "the first book was great, the rest are DNFs." Besides, I consider my failures to be learning opportunities for others. Yep, I've got just enough ego to hope that someone out there who isn't confident in whatever aspect of their life gets ahold of my series, sees the flaws, sees the improvement, and what they take away from that progression is that it's okay to stumble and keep going. You don't have to be perfect in public. You just have to keep challenging yourself. 

Fail. You have permission. 

 

Confronting Failure - and Learning from It!

Did you see the cover for THE LOST PRINCESS RETURNS yet? I'm so in love with it for so many reasons, but mainly because it so perfectly captures Jenna/Ivariel in my mind. Especially everything she's feeling about returning to Dasnaria after all this time.

I'm glad everyone nagged me to write this story! The novella turned out to be a short novel, and releases June 29. You can preorder at the links below at a special sale price or here. Yes, there will be a print version; it should be available for preorder later this week.

Our actual topic at the SFF Seven this week is confronting failure. Not just the occasional downturns of fortune which is the lot of every writer, but also being able to take an honest look at what is just not working.

I recently signed up to be mentored during SFWA's Nebula Conference. (Salient note: because the conference was online this year, we've been able to keep it going. For a reduced price, you can avail yourself of the recorded panels and workshops, along with ongoing chats and discussions!) I've always volunteered to mentor others, and I've always joked that I *want* a mentor. While I know I have an enviable level of success compared to many, I'm also invested in evaluating what's NOT working in my career (Spoiler: I am not a millionaire) and how I can do better. I ended up having a fantastic conversation with Laura Anne Gilman. She took my questions and ramblings very seriously and gave me some great ideas for how I could "level up," career-wise. (She did say she thought "leveling up" applied mainly to craft, and I could see her point.) Amusingly enough, by the end of the conversation, she said she needed to write down some of her wise insights for herself.

I think taking a hard look at what is not working for us career-wise is just as important as taking those hard looks at why a manuscript won't sell or isn't grabbing people.

That kind of work never ends!

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  Or Buy the ebook Direct from Jeffe

More than two decades have gone by since Imperial Princess Jenna, broken in heart and body, fled her brutal marriage—and the land of her birth. She’s since become Ivariel: warrior, priestess of Danu, trainer of elephants, wife and mother. Wiser, stronger, happier, Ivariel has been content to live in her new country, to rest her battered self, and to recover from the trauma of what happened to her when she was barely more than a girl.

But magic has returned to the world—abruptly and with frightening force—and Ivariel takes that profound change as a sign that it’s time to keep a promise she made to the sisters she left behind. Ivariel must leave the safety she’s found and return to face the horrors she fled.

As Ivariel emerges from hiding, she discovers that her vicious brother is now Emperor of Dasnaria, and her much-hated mother, the Dowager Empress Hulda, is aiding him in his reign of terror. Worse, it seems that Hulda’s resurrection of the tainted god Deyrr came about as a direct result of Jenna’s flight long ago.

It’s up to Ivariel—and the girl she stopped being long ago—to defeat the people who cruelly betrayed her, and to finally liberate her sisters. Determined to cleanse her homeland of the evil that nearly destroyed her, Ivariel at last returns to face the past.

But this time, she’ll do it on her own terms.

Tomato Tomahto Yumblie

Word Cloud from COLONY UNDER SIEGE

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is our favorite and least favorite ways the language is changing.

(Looks at topic, pokes it with a stick, turns it over and then upside down…)

Yeah, not a subject I give any thought to. I use language, I write books using language and I’m happy to learn and utilize new terms.

When I see a term being used in social media that I’m not sure of, I – what else? – google it. 

In the case of my title today, I googled synonyms for tomato and - oh my - a lot of them are red cheek inducing but this one was fun...

Yumblie: "Yumblies are small red creatures found in Bubblegloop Swamp in Banjo-Kazooie. They pop up out of the ground in the minigame Eat More Yumblies or Grumblies than Mr. Vile, where Banjo (as a crocodile) must consume more Yumblies and/or Grumblies than Mr. Vile"

Apparently they are deemed to look tomato-like. Amazing what a google search will bring you. I also found 'jumblies' from an 1871 poem. But I'm getting sidetracked here which is what happens when an author does research online!

I’m happy to invent new terms for my science fiction romance novels and to create words for my alien languages from syllables that sound good to me. I also have given my various characters different kinds of universal translators. Here's a sample from MATEER: A Badari Warriors SciFi Romance Novel: A tiny chiming sounded from the edge of the table, drawing her attention as the three alien males sat. A discrete display blinked at her in thin air, hovering below the tabletop, offering six choices, one of which was Basic. Hastily, she clicked that one—the only recognizable thing on the display—with her index finger and was rewarded with voices in her ear, apparently translating what the others were saying. The selection menu disappeared. She glanced at the men, but they were ignoring her, so either no one cared if she now understood them or the scientists were unaware the conference room had offered her the amenity. Schooling her face to be blank and bored, she sat and waited.

My attention can be briefly caught by some fascinating linguistic trivia, like the amazing @HaggardHawks serves up daily on twitter.  Here’s a sample tweet from Friday: In 17th century English, an EGG-WIFE TROT was a fast walking pace. It literally referred to the quickest pace an egg-seller heading to market dared to walk at while carrying a basket of eggs.

And then I might retweet it or I might just move on.

One thing I found fascinating over my long career at the old day job in process improvement and change management was how each area has its own terms and verbal shorthand which can seem impenetrable to the newcomer or outside. I think every organization has this. I still remember my ‘blue pencil’ number from working at the old May Company. I was 318881 and if the procedure called for a clerk to get a blue pencil approval on a return or other transaction, they’d have to find me and get me to scribble that plus my initials on their sales document. I can still do the scribble in two seconds flat.

When we did an enterprise-wide installation of Oracle software for the first time at the old day job, one of the biggest challenges was getting various departments together to flowchart the movement of various transactions. I remember sitting in one meeting where because of my broad interdepartment experience, I knew one of the words they were all using, thinking everyone understood it to be the same thing, actually had totally different meanings. I stopped the meeting and went around the room and had each department explain what the word meant to them. A lot of dropped jaws and disbelief by the end. We had 64 different understandings of the same word. Of course we eventually overcame that and other linguistic challenges but it was a good lesson learned for me.

At one point, years later, I was working with a team from a high powered consulting firm, who of course had their own jargon, which began to creep into our daily conversations because we were hearing it all the time. I had to laugh out loud the first time I heard one of them describing something as being ‘crisp’ because that was MY word and I was always demanding our presentations to my management be ‘crisp’ and anything else we delivered as a work product had to be ‘crisp’. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing my language infiltrate their corporate culture. I’m sure after the engagement with us ended, ‘crisp’ went away too, for lack of daily reinforcement.

Words have power and I’m happy that in the current world the English language (and others as well but I’m an English speaker so…) is so adaptable and welcoming to new words or combinations of old ones.

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Changing Language

Language changes. I strongly suspect change comes faster when a culture is highly mobile like ours is.  There is a quote out there in the world about English rifling through the pockets of other languages, but in its original form, the quote is super problematic for it's sexism and attempt to somehow shame sex workers. I prefer the mental image of English as a thief willing to sneak up on another language, club it over the head, and take everything it could find. 

It's how we got hurricane. And geyser. From entirely different parts of the world. Imagine trying to learn English as a second language and having someone tell you, "No, no. That word's Japanese. Yeah, that word's Icelandic. And that one? That one's -- hell we have no idea where that one came from. Sorry." 

Then add in the variations and dialects associated with the language. The UK has one version of English. The US another. Australia yet another. The we add in Canada and the Caribbean region and I defy you, if you aren't practiced in hearing it, to decipher a southern Creole dialect speaking what's supposed to be English. You'll understand my sympathy for anyone trying to learn English. The language makes no damned sense. 

While I occasionally feel like some old curmudgeon yelling, "You kids get off my linguistic lawn!" I'm learning to not mind the ground of my language shifting beneath my feet. It's been rightly pointed out that rigid, codified grammar is a form of oppression. Insisting on "The One True Way" of language devalues the speakers of other dialects. For the longest time, the most common impression most people had of anyone who spoke with a Southern accent was that they were less intelligent. Now think about how grammar rules are used against Black culture and the dialects that have grown out of Black experience in this country. It absolutely casts Black language and culture as lesser. As something to be mocked and laughed at. Instead of listened to and appreciated for the original music it brings to the whole of the English language.

Oh, for the love of language.

“Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.” ~Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

As writers, words are our tools, our weapons, our voice. And as writers that means we always need to be collecting new tools, sharpening our weapons, and improving our voice. How do we do that?

We listen.

I don’t believe it matters what genre you’re writing in, you’ve got to be able to listen to people. Not simply what language they’re speaking, (English, Spanish, French, etc.) but soak up their personal language. How do they use their words, what do they enunciate, what offends and what makes them laugh. 

You don’t have to go far for language to change either. For a broad example you can look at the US, there’s southern drawl to the long o’s of Northern MN…don’t ya know. 

For a specific example, when I was in high school my hometown used the word barr. 

Barr: something stupid, ridiculous, dumb. 

Our school’s top rival, the neighboring town, didn’t use barr. If you used it in that town...they knew exactly where you were from. By the way, the distance between these towns is about ten miles. 

What does that have to do with writing? 

If you can listen then you'll hear words used in ways you've never imagined. Our languages change all the time. If you doubt that, check out the yearly additions to the dictionary! If you can listen and understand people, you can write realistic characters. And that’s one thing that all books should have in common.