It’s a pleasure to fail you
I still remember the first real work of fiction I ever wrote. I was 10, I think, and I started a short story series entitled, “Captain Cool and the Hero Wanna-Be League.” It had a total readership of three, if my brother read it too. This series was a satire on all the comic books I regularly drooled over. It had some unique characters (Col. Biscuit, an actual living buttermilk biscuit, and Conjunction Man, who could only say conjunctions, just to name a few) and drew pretty heavily from the books I was reading at the time. Honestly, it was pretty bad. And I didn’t care. Creativity doesn’t worry about quality, or art, or succeeding. It just enjoys the process of creating. Quality, art, and success follow, thanks to the diligence of the artist, but creativity enjoys failure just as much as success. It abhors fear, and caution. It doesn’t understand borders, or conservativism. It simply creates. When was the last time you let yourself fail for the sake of creativity? I guarantee you, your greatest success will be preceded by your most creative failure.
