Failing Up

In school, I was a terrible test taker. I know a lot of stuff and love learning. Although, when I was forced to write it down: nothing, nada, zip.  When I would look on that ‘F’ on my test, a friend would say: “Well at least you failed high.” Not going to lie, every time she said it, I instantly wanted to punch her. Especially, when she would hold her A+ for comparison. I knew the material, but test anxiety would rear its ugly head Every. Single. Time. Because in my head, failure is failure is failure is failure. I didn’t understand the difference.

Fast forward to 2019-2020, I published my debut novel ‘The Sea Nymph’. If I could rewind time, I would do everything differently. But since I’m not a time traveler, I must face my failures for what they are: failing up.

People don’t talk about failures for a lot of reasons. The most common reason is that failure comes across as shameful, embarrassing, and humbling.  But it shouldn’t be at least not to the degree that we’ve allowed.

Failure is allowed.

It’s healthy, actually. It means that you tried. Edison failed creating how many lightbulbs before one worked? One thousand. It was lightbulb one thousand and one that worked. The wonderful thing about failure is that it points us in the direction of success…as long as we are paying attention to the signs and aren’t accidentally falling into the insanity category.

In failure there is room for growth. I won’t settle for less than anymore. After one rejection when I first queried for my first manuscript

, I immediately went a different route and ended up with a publisher that wasn’t right for me. I’m not great at marketing and self-promoting and they wanted me to do both. ‘The Sea Nymph’, minus a couple errors that the inhouse editor didn’t catch, was a great book. A little amateurish now that I know more and have strengthened my craft, but it was a great first book.

‘The Sea Nymph’ was on the market for four years and after all that time and money I had sunk into it I received less than 2% back in profits. And people would ask how it was doing and I honestly didn’t know how to respond. I would say good, but I was lying.  Finally, with enough time and thought and tears, I decided to dissolve my contract. Knowing that it’s time to move on. That this book probably wasn’t going to go anywhere which is the hardest pill I’ve ever had to swallow. Writing a book is exposing your soul and I’d felt like my soul had been rejected.

I’ve had a second manuscript sitting on my computer for three years.  I would make occasional progress in editing and looking at publishers but that failure weighed heavily on me, and even now I’m still dragging my feet, trying every opportunity to prolong the process.

Oddly enough, my inspiration for finally sucking it up and trying again is Taylor Swift. While I’ve liked Taylor Swift for her music, I’ve never appreciated her genius. Not until now. It wasn’t until her releases of her ‘Taylor’s Version’ of her albums that I finally saw her genius for what it is and her absolute raw talent and it is incredible. My thought is that if she has such a big platform and she can confess what happened to her career and make it right, little nobody me can try again. That and I’m tired of all the bull crap. I’m going to do it my way, unapologetically.

Ironically, I initially drafted this post in October 2023 and left it sitting on my computer, still not ready to publicly acknowledge my shortcomings. And subconsciously, I guess I was waiting to publish it with something to prove. But since the beginning of this year (2024) I have sent out six queries for my newest manuscript with four rejections and two pending.

And I’m not going crazy…yet.

I’m just failing up.