Can you talk about failure? Ever face failure in life something like(more like in school)? How did you deal with it?
I can definitely talk about failure, because I’ve experienced a lot of it. The only way to go through life without confronting failure at some point is if you never try to accomplish anything, and that’s a sad way to live. But, to make it more personal: I knew from the age of about twelve that I wanted to be a writer. Of course, one does not simply become a writer overnight, and I knew that, but I did not expect the number of stumbling blocks along the way. College was the worst. The creative writing department at my school was a bureaucratic clusterfuck. What I wanted more than anything was to stay on the fiction track and do a senior honors thesis in my fourth and final year. But here’s the catch: once you’ve taken Introduction to Fiction Writing, you then have to reapply every single year. And they do not take everyone back.
My transition from Intro to Intermediate went just fine, but my Intermediate professor hated me. His class was full of arbitrary, stupid rules about what people could and couldn’t write, and he picked favorites from the very beginning. I wasn’t one of them, not because I wasn’t a good writer, but because I refused to conform to the weird Southern minimalist style our particular department favors. I did not get into Advanced the first time I applied. It was frustrating, but I applied again–this time using a piece of fiction which I knew fit perfectly within their little Southern grunge box. And I did get in. I was annoyed that I had to pander to their limited sense of aesthetics, but I did it. I still had my sights set on Senior Honors. But you only get one chance to apply for that. Guess what? I didn’t get in. I was simultaneously devastated and furious. But because I have never been a person to take anything lying down, I said, “Fine,” and applied to do a senior honors thesis in the dramatic art department instead.
It wasn’t smooth sailing from there. I pitched my thesis idea to the department chair and she told me flat-out, “You can’t do this. It’s not possible, not in the amount of time you’re talking about.” And I said, in so many words, “Watch me.” I did exactly what I said I would and graduated with Highest Honors.
I took a year off in the interest of making some money and finishing the novel I was at work on before applying to graduate school. I applied to fourteen different schools, for two separate programs: MAs in Shakespeare Studies and MFAs in fiction writing. What I didn’t realize (at the time) was that a lot of MFA programs are looking for the same sort of minimalist kitchen sink realism that my university’s CW department was falling all over themselves to read. That’s not what I write, so it’s not what I sent in with my applications. Now I’m going to tell you something supremely embarrassing: You know how many MFA programs rejected me? All of them. All of them except one, and they might have rejected me too if I hadn’t withdrawn my application because I figured out, mercifully, that an MFA was not at all what I wanted. That right there, my friend, is a lot of failure.
As you can imagine, it wasn’t a good feeling. I’d realized I didn’t actually want to be in an MFA program at all, but that much rejection still stings. Did I start to doubt my talent and whether this whole writing thing was just a pipe dream? You betcha. But I’d already sent out 25 query letters. I’d already pulled that trigger, and it was too late to go back. So I said, “Alright. I’ve got one more iron in the fire. Let’s see.”
By January I’d signed with a literary agency. It’s now July and I have a book deal with a Big Five publisher. In September I’m moving to the UK to study something I love more than anything else in one of the most culturally vibrant cities in the world. I’m not trying to brag. I’m trying to show you that failure and success are not mutually exclusive. Just because you fail at one thing does not mean you won’t succeed at another. But it’s not quite that simple. Failure does not define you. How you respond to failure does. If you someone knocks you down, get the fuck up. They only win if you let them. Failure works the same way. Take it like a punch. Grit your teeth, clench your muscles, brace yourself. It’s going to hurt, but it won’t cripple or kill you. Stagger up. Fight back.
Failure is inevitable. Success is not. The people who succeed are the ones who refuse to give up no matter how many times they fail.
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