Failure: not the opposite of success, but its useful companion

Thoughts from iconic women writers who weren't afraid to fail. You shouldn't be, either!

In today’s Sunday edition of Literary Ladies Lite, I’ll be taking an affectionate (!) look at failure. Women can be very risk-averse, so we tend to play it safe and take any perceived failure very hard. I’ve learned from the eminent women writers I’ve studied that failure isn’t the polar opposite of success, but its intertwined, and almost constant companion.

As females, we’re conditioned to be good girls and to strive for perfection in whatever we do. I’m not talking just about writing, but about any creative or professional pursuit. Relationships. Friendships. And life itself.

But failing to fail, to be a bit ungraceful, means we’re not taking risks; we’re not allowing ourselves to grow past our self-imposed limits. Over the past several years, one of the first things I’ve told my college interns is that they’re allowed to fail, at least in front of themselves, and to feel safe failing in front of me. Sure, strive for that “A” at the end, but allow for missteps along the way.

It’s stating the obvious that we learn more from our mistakes than getting whatever it is right the first time. It’s hard to achieve any kind of dream without taking risks. So write the proverbial “shitty first draft” (with a nod to Anne Lamott, who popularized the phrase), throw the lumpy pot, start the business that may or may not take off.

In a 1928 letter to her friend Virginia Woolf, British author Vita Sackville-West pondered:

“Is it better to be extremely ambitious, or rather modest? Probably the latter is safer; but I hate safety, and would rather fail gloriously than dingily succeed.”

Most of us would rather not fail at all, gloriously or otherwise. That’s why we’re content to settle for modest success, instead of taking bold steps needed for resounding success. To fail at what we most long for seems like a terrible fate, so many of us simply avoid trying.

The writing lives of several iconic women writers demonstrate that failure isn’t the flip side of success, but its occasional, often necessary companion. Let’s see what some of our favorite authors thought of failure, and how they exprienced it …

Charlotte Brontë's first novel: unpublished in her lifetime

Charlotte Brontë never had the satisfaction of seeing her first novel, The Professor, in print, though not for lack of trying (it was published after her death, once her legacy was assured).

While The Professor made its hapless rounds among London’s publishers, getting one rejection after another, Charlotte continued to risk failure by continuing to working on another novel. That second effort was none other Jane Eyre, which proved a resounding success from the moment it saw print.