“Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.”  

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What a refreshing remark! Somehow, everything in our society tells us that we shouldn’t fail – that failure is bad, that we’re supposed to succeed in everything we do. It’s an enormous amount of pressure, isn’t it? And it’s a myth, because failure and success go hand in hand – you can’t have one without the other. So, instead of focusing on the dangers of failing, let’s focus on rising up when we fail:

We rise up when we have a bad writing day and we get back to our desk the next day and keep writing.

We rise up when we struggle with putting what we want to say down on the page and keep revising until it’s closer to the vision in our heads.

We rise up when we polish a story to send out for publication and get it out into the world, even after we’ve had that story rejected.

We rise up when we find willing beta readers who will give us their insights so we can make our work better and stronger.

We rise up when we strive to find an agent and publishing outlet even if we failed again and again until we finally reach our goal.

Everywhere we look, we find that people who rise up instead of giving up are the ones who finally make their mark. They see failure as a temporary state they are passing through – not a permanent hole they’re stuck in. If we can reframe our view of failure and see it as integral to success, then we can rewrite our stories in ways that bring us where we want to go. So let’s fail forward, rise up, and fail our way to success. Write on!