At What I Dream to Fail

Yesterday I watched a really neat short TV show on Yahoo called The Failure Project. If you've heard of it, that's awesome. If not, here's a quick synop (the details might be slightly off, but the gist is there).

Once upon a time two sisters somewhere in their thirties decided to dare each other to fail at one of their childhood dreams. For the first time in decades one sister pursued singing in order to "win" the dare (she ended up in a choir). A few friends heard about this, and one was so excited he decided to do the same thing with a group of his friends. They would support each other as much as possible while they each pursued a dream of theirs, one they never pursued before because it was so likely to fail.

Eventually someone in TV met the guy who started this all, and decided this would make an awesome TV show. And it does (despite the fact that no franchise has really supported it, and it's only in 15 minute clips on Yahoo).

The main point of the show isn't for everyone to succeed, but rather for everyone to fail, and in the meantime break down all those stigmas against failure, and hopefully experience something life-changing and enlightening.

After watching a couple of short clips, I started wondering what were some of my childhood dreams, and what I would do if I wasn't worried about failing or all the practical life issues of having a regular salary and savings, etc...

While I had many dreams as a kid (several of which involved discovering an alternate reality or learning magic), the most important and persistent of these was writing a novel. I've always loved writing. Most minutes I wasn't exploring or reading as a child, I was writing. I started way back in second grade with stories and poetry for our school's literary journal (I still have a copy). In middle school this continued and a couple of friends who shared a similar passion and I spent our afternoons and weekends writing a story. We made it as far as around seventy pages or more.

In high school I had slightly less time, and slightly more self-consciousness, so my writing suffered. In college, I pursued a writing minor, and took classes in fiction writing and creative non-fiction. I participated in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November of one year, but didn't get nearly to 50,000 words, and became disgusted with my poorly designed novel (which is kind of the point of NaNoWriMo; they don't expect you to write an earth-shattering work of genius, just to get people writing lots and lots, to overcome exactly those boundaries I came upon and at which point I gave up).

Throughout it all, I couldn't give up science (which I also love, but perhaps without the same fervor and childhood abandon as writing). Mostly this was because I was old enough to realize that making a living off of writing fiction was about as likely as going to Mars: it wasn't necessarily impossible, but so close that to pursue it was fairly laughable and vaguely embarrassing. I certainly didn't want to end up writing technical journals for pennies, or having to sleep on my friends' couches for years, or start selling my organs on the black market for groceries (that seemed like a natural progression at the time).

So science it was (and is). But I always dreamed of doing both. I figured I could keep writing on the side, and when an idea struck me, I could just write slowly and surely until it was done. Even when thinking about medical school, I dream about all the great stories I'll have, all the people I'll meet who can provide inspiration, the great blog posts I'll write on the interesting things I learn. This idea of doing both is still feasible, but about as much so as that trip to Mars.

That's because writing takes time. Lots of it. And all those things I say I will pursue on the side for at least a few hours a week, turn into a few hours a month, or less. There's always something else that seems just as entertaining, and often less work, like drawing, or going for a swim, or watching TV, or dancing, or playing music. I love all these things, and want to be great at them. Then again, none of them are childhood dreams, and so I fear much less the possibility of failure. These aren't things I want to make a living doing, while writing for a long time was definitely one of those things. I thought I could get good at writing when only writing the things I wanted to write, when I wanted to write them. I thought writing was a talent, even when I espoused it being about hard work.

My blog is a great example. I had wonderful ideas of how much I would write, and how inspiring it would be, back when I started. Only I was determined not to write any bad blog posts. I aimed for each one to be better than the last. Which meant that my weekly posts turned into bi-monthly posts, and are now barely monthly posts.

Writing is entirely about hard work, as is anything else. Talent might give you a jump start for the first ten minutes you do something, but after that, you're all on even ground, and you're going to have to work. Really hard. Harder than you think you can feasibly work.

And so I have decided to try harder to fail at writing. I am going to write bad posts. I am going to write bad stories. I am going to submit those stories somewhere and they are going to get returned to me with regretful rejections. But I will be writing harder than before. I will be writing more than before.

So heads up. You might be seeing some fiction on this blog upcoming. And it will probably be terrible. Wish me luck, or better yet, wish me more failures.