Exercises in Failure: Allow yourself to create crap

We’re all afraid of failing. We dread critics, seek the praise of our peers, and crave spotless records. We think that to be happy, productive citizens, we have to avoid failure as much as possible.

Who can blame us? In school we were taught to be ashamed if the teacher marks a giant red “X” on our test paper. When I was growing up, my mother would even slap my wrists (or burn my stuff, depending on her mood) whenever I made mistakes. We were taught that failure is the enemy of success, and to have the latter, you can’t have the former.

But once we step out into the real world, we know that it’s impossible to keep failure out of our lives.  In fact, it’s an important part of success. They aren’t mutually exclusive, especially when it comes to creative work.

Image by massdistraction via Flickr

The truth is, while you’re creating, the quality of work that you’re striving for is more important than the quality you’ve achieved. Worrying about the final product should only come when you’re actually working on the final product.  First drafts and sketches are just an exploration of an idea.  Mistakes are okay.  Misspellings are fine.  After all, you’re the only one who’s going to ever read it.

Thinking this way prevents stagnation, pushes you to grow, and prevents you from being too pressured by perfectionism. It’s just a draft. It’s not the measure of your merit as an artist.

This doesn’t just apply to writing - but you already know that.  For the past week, I’ve been doing quick crappy sketches of my cats, found objects, and imaginary things.  A waste of pen and paper?  Maybe.  But I like to think of it as an exercise in failure.

Epic FAIL!

One of the downsides of popularizing the use of “fail” as a noun is that people immediately point their fingers at things they don’t like and yell “FAIL”.  Although doing this has its uses (such as in the humorous FAILblog), I see people use it all the time when commenting on blog posts or artwork online.  In that context, it really doesn’t qualify as criticism. I rarely see this word followed up with an explanation about why something “fails”.

Have you ever encountered anyone writing “That-idea-was-better-explored-by-Thomas-Friedman FAIL”? Or how about the paradoxical “Proper-word-usage FAIL”?  Of course not. That word is meant to be an insult, not something you can actually learn from - a far cry from the real role of failure in creative work.

So what is the role of failure and why should we embrace it?

First, it allows us to create freely without being burdened by perfection. Many people want to write a novel but they never try because they feel they won’t be the next Hemingway. That’s a silly reason. The greatest writers in history probably had no idea they’d be labeled as such. In fact, they probably envied their peers, not knowing they were good in their own right. These people just made stuff while the results took care of themselves.

Another reason is that we’ll realize the weight of the creative process and learn to endure it. It took me only a couple of days to read Jeanette Winterson’s “The Passion”. Did it take her a couple of days to write that? No, but it’s easy to think that way.  Mass media bombards us with well-lit soft focus montages of writers working through the night and handing in a finished manuscript by morning. This makes it easy to believe that creative work is magical and inspired, so when we get to do it for ourselves and realize that it’s not as glamorous as we thought it would be, we feel like we’re doing something wrong.

Producing great (or even competently made) art takes time. Failure helps us realize this. When we get used to it enough, we’ll be more resilient to the obstacles we face during the creative process.

Now, let’s fail…

If you want to exercise failure for yourself, here are some great tools you can start with:

One Word - You will spend 60 seconds writing about the site’s word for the day.  When I took it for a test drive, the word I wrote about was “after”.  I’m going to try using this every day before I start working so I can get the creativity flowing.  It’s a good tool if you want to work on something unexpected and random.

Write or Die - Also known as Dr. Wicked’s Writing Lab, this tool “punishes” you if you don’t write a certain amount of words within your selected time frame (from 10 minutes to 2 hours).

Pen and paper - Whatever happened to the good ‘ol pen and paper?  They don’t deserve to die like the abacus or the fax machine. This tool is all about writing (and perhaps a bit of doodling). You won’t be able to say “Oh I can play just one game of Spider Solitaire”.

Stick with legal pad and an ordinary pen.  Nothing brings out the paralyzing writing phobia like beautiful linen paper and a $100 fountain pen.

Typewriter - What I love about the typewriter is that erasing is a chore. You have to pause what you’re doing, grab the white-out, apply it, wait for it to dry… you get the point. If you let your mistakes sit there and just go with the flow of what you’re doing, there’s a better chance that you’ll keep going and let the editing come later.

Yes, whatever you write using these tools will probably be shitty.  Just let go and give yourself the license to churn out crap during these exercises.  At least you’re churning out something, which is far better than sitting around waiting for the perfect idea to happen (it won’t).

What are you waiting for? Go forth and FAIL, people!

If you enjoyed this post, you might like these:

1. Imperfection is no big deal
2. Exercises in Failure (Part 2): Let them trash your work