3 Steps To Surviving Failure (How To Become A Better Writer)

Failure is an inevitable part of being a writer in some way. 

You may not get accepted by the publisher you wanted. 

You may not get accepted by the agents you were hoping to work with. 

Your book may not reach the top of the best-seller list. 

Your book may flop. 

If being a famous best-selling author was a sure thing then more people would be doing it, but because it's not writers have to find a a way to not let the failures knock them to the floor. 

Sure you may stumble back a few steps but you'll never truly be able to be at the beginning of your writer's journey again. 

If You Fail. Embrace It.

Every time I get a rejection for a novel I'm querying I print out the email, place it into a folder beneath my desk, and move a paper clip from one jar on my desktop to another. A habit I picked up from James Clear's Atomic Habits. 

Sure the rejection stings, but now I'm not focusing on the hurt. I'm learning to find what I can improve, showing myself that I am still trying as I have more paper clips to move, and I keep going. 

Fail Persistently. 

Those who give up writing after one book flops or one post doesn't receive thousands of hearts are writers who should have stuck to keeping their writing to themselves. 

Writing has never been a one-and-done thing, even those authors you see making it big on their first novel still had to go through dozens of books that may never see the light of day before they found the one that someone wanted to take a chance on. 

Most of those viral famous authors don't show the amount of money they spent on ads to bring up hype about their work or the dozens of rejections they received when they began querying their work because they want to only showcase the good when the hard work should be shown and praised as well. 

Focus On The Process, Not The Outcome 

You can't control the outcome of your writing once it's out there for the world to read. All you can do is help spread it around and put it into the hands of those who will read it, but you can't tell them how to feel about it. 

The outcome isn't where you should be spending your energy because it's out of your hands, but what isn't is the writing itself. 

Focus on making it something you are proud of and how the rest of the world sees it won't matter so much. 

It can be frustrating and disappointing not to revive that external validation when you know what you put out there was something to be proud of so focus on the internal instead. 

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Becoming a better writer isn't about not failing, or never feeling disappointed. It's about embracing failure as a learning opportunity to know what to work harder on for the next time.  

Best of luck! 

With love, 

B.K. xo xo

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This story was originally posted on Medium.

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