The courage to make mistakes

By Lifeline · Dec 10, 2016 · 485 · 3
  1. I am not sure if that will be another rant or should be read as encouraging. Honestly people, don't you want your very own story? Aren't you interested what you'll discover on your own? Other people won't ever share your vision - it is solely up to you to capture it however you can.

    All these threads, bouncing ideas out there, giving others a choice where YOUR story should go, there is something decidedly off with that. See paragraph one.

    Yeah, there WILL be mistakes. You WILL make them, just as (almost) every other writer who has ever lived. Is the prospect of making mistakes so frightening that you want to deprive your story of your own vision? And the mistakes you might make - they have the potential to spark off, well the spark. Your very own inner fire. The process of making them is a journey to your own voice, your own maturing, as a writer and a human being. Don't deprive yourself of the joy in finding out.

    Have courage to embrace your own not-knowing. Your own stupidity. Acknowledgement of your own shortcomings - and finding out firsthand in the making of mistakes - is a joy in itself. At least that's what it feels to me. I am never happier than when I find another 'ant' in my chaotic anthill of a story. It lets me experiment and go down different paths - with words and maybe rearrange this anthill along a bit more streamlined patterns.

    Embrace your own mistakes and glory in their corrections.
    v_k, Oscar Leigh, zoupskim and 2 others like this.

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  1. Oscar Leigh
    Yes but I want to learn from my mistakes as early as possible. I think up bits and then I want to know other's thoughts. It's still an active learning process. And I'm still going to continue to learn and develop later. There is always more to learn.
    Oscar Leigh, Dec 11, 2016
      Lifeline likes this.
  2. jannert
    I totally agree with your post, @Lifeline. However, there will be folks out there who think mistakes are 'bad' and should be avoided at all costs. They don't understand how valuable mistakes can be. Or how constraining the fear of making one can be.

    I remember learning to type on a manual typewriter, and then an electric one. I was so terrified of making a mistake—because they were so hard to correct—that my typing speed was around 10 words per minute on a good day. However, once I got a wordprocessor and realised how easy it could be to correct mistakes, my typing speed increased to where I'm now just about as fast as anybody else on the planet.

    Obviously if you're in a risky activity—I wouldn't advise making a mistake while crossing Niagara Falls on a tightrope—you try not to ever make a mistake. But when you're learning in a risk-free environment, such as writing? Experimentation is the best activity you can possibly encourage. Try, see what works for you, try again, etc. That way you develop your own voice and create your own story, not a safe version of somebody else's.
    jannert, Dec 11, 2016
      zoupskim, Oscar Leigh and Lifeline like this.
  3. Lifeline
    Yeah, that's what I wanted to say with the 'encouraging' part. Sure, making mistakes on a typewriter is a pain in the bum (I know that, too), but writing is hardly a high-risk activity. You have all the time in the world to correct any you make.

    And for me the joy of correcting them is worth every moment :)
    Lifeline, Dec 11, 2016
      Oscar Leigh and jannert like this.
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