The Only Way to Fail as a Writer

Getting rejected doesn’t make you a failure

Image by oksun70 — licensed from DepositPhotos

Thousands of commuters waited to cross the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis on a sweltering August day. It was the evening rush hour, but the temperature was still in the 80s. Traffic was unusually slow because massive construction equipment was blocking several lanes.

Bridge repairs were underway.

Around six ‘o’clock something slipped. The movement was imperceptible for the first one-thousandth of a second. Then in the next moment, the entire bridge collapsed, sending 13 people to their deaths in the Mississippi river, and injuring another 145.

A major bridge had failed, and the results were horrific.

When Writers Struggle

When things go badly for a writer, nobody dies — at least not real people. But, when you’re struggling, it can feel like you’re the protagonist in a Greek tragedy — it feels like the gods have cursed you to watch your dreams slowly die for all eternity.

If you were to survey a random group of 100 writers, and you could guarantee honest answers, 99 of those writers would admit to feeling like a failure. We writers are a miserable lot.

Writers believe they are failures because they haven’t found an agent yet, because they keep getting…