Why You Should Keep Failing At Writing
Don’t waste your time trying to be good, that’s irrelevant
It was Winston Churchill who said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Like him or not, he had a great point — the only way to get out of a shitty situation is to push through it until it becomes less and less shit. As you crawl through the tunnel of shit, you’ll notice that it gets less shitty with each movement. I’m obviously not as eloquent as he was.
We often think that our writing pursuits will just pay off one day and that we’ll wake up with dozens of messages of admiration, thousands of followers, and a few quid in the bank. It’s natural to think that our efforts have a beginning, middle, and end, but I don’t think this applies to most people. True writers fail, but their dedication to it means they inevitably end up successful.
We live in the age of instant gratification and it’s incredibly easy to write yourself off if you’re not a success after a month or two. It’s also easy to look at other writers on Medium and conclude that they’re just fundamentally better.
I’ve said this many times — you don’t have to be a good writer, just an authentic one. Stop wasting your time trying to be perfect, as that’s irrelevant to your journey. If you tell stories that get people thinking, feeling, or acting, then who gives two shits if your metaphors suck and you have the occasional run-on sentence?
Either way, I’m dedicating myself to one thing — to keep failing. Yes, that sounds strange, but hear me out — the more we feel like we’re struggling, the more we’ll learn about our writing, and the better we can become at it. In an age where instant success is always sold to us, I say we fight back and continue doing what we do best — rolling our sleeves up and putting pen to paper.
