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Wednesday, July 5, 2017

IWSG

Posting the First Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer's Support Group, is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh. YOU can sign up HERE to participate.

Every month a question will be posed that may prompt you to share advice, insight, a personal experience or story. Remember, the question is optional. You can write about anything that relates to your writing journey.

Let's give a warm welcome to our co-hosts, Tamara Narayan, Pat Hatt, Patricia Lynne, Juneta Key, and Doreen McGettigan!

This month's question is: Have you given yourself permission to fail?




I almost failed to post today. Have I given myself permission to fail? Oh yeah. I may not like it, but the truth is (for me) I fail at writing all the time. Don't tell anyone but my first drafts always need a lot of work. Sometimes it takes multiple tries before I feel confident enough to let someone read it which, of course, invariably leads to more revisions, more edits. Yeah, I fail all the time. But so what? Although I don't remember it, I'm sure a fell down many times before I learned to walk or run. I know I fell down when I learned to ride my bike. And I know I didn't always catch a fish when I put out a line. Were those failures? You tell me. 

Is this hibiscus a failure?

There are a gazillion excellent quotes about failure on the net. I picked 20. 


  1. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”– C. S. Lewis
  2. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”– Samuel Beckett
  3. “The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”– Buddha
  4. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”– Confucius
  5. “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”– Thomas Edison
  6. “A man may fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”– John Burroughs
  7. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”– J.K. Rowling
  8. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”– Albert Einstein
  9. “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”– Eloise Ristad
  10. “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.”– John Wooden
  11. “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”– George Bernard Shaw
  12. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”– Michael Jordan
  13. “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”– Wayne Gretzky
  14. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”– Mark Twain
  15. “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.”– Zig Ziglar
  16. "Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be" - John Wooden
  17. “Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert F. Kennedy
  18.  “There is no failure except in no longer trying.” - Chris Bradford
  19. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” - Winston Churchill
  20. “I'd rather be partly great than entirely useless.” - Neal Shusterman
Just so you know, this whole post is an epic fail! The question this month is, What is one valuable lesson you've learned since you started writing? My answer to that is, as long as I'm still breathing then failure is NOT the worst thing that can happen. 

Got a favorite quote? Ever failed at something only to succeed at a later time? What valuable lesson have you learned?

24 comments:

  1. I love all those quotes. Quitting is the only way we truly fail.

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  2. Yep, quitting may arise, but the only way we let such a notion win is to give in.

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  3. Failure is part of the deal, and that's something I've had to learn again and again. I can't remember who said it or if this is the exact wording, but "If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough" is one of my favorite quotes.

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    1. We need another word. Failure carries too much baggage. We need to word that expresses how when something doesn't work, it's okay and we can go on with our heads held high as we try again. Failure connotes giving up.

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  4. Every failure is a lesson waiting to happen. I don't think true success would mean anything without the sting of failure preceding it. Here's to pushing through the lows and reaching the light beyond!

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    1. "Every failure is a lesson waiting to happen." That's the core of the truth right there.

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  5. We have to give ourselves permission to fail. It's natural that we all do.

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    1. Absolutely. None of us is perfect the first time around. And even after lots of practice, none of us is ever ever reaches perfection in anything.

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  6. My favorite quote from the above is #5, Henry Ford's quote. #6 sounds like it was written with our president in mind.

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    1. Ooops, #5 is a quote from Thomas Edison, not Henry Ford. I'm corrected the mistake. :)

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    2. Noted. It's still a great quote! :)

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  7. Exactly, Karen. We fall down, we get back up again.

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  8. Awesome quotes! Thanks for sharing. :D

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  9. I like the saying fail, fail, fail until you don't. It is kind of like learning to walk. You fell down until you didn't. Great post.
    Juneta @ Writer's Gambit

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  10. Love all your inspiring quotes. And yes, it's okay to fail sometimes. I sure do.

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  11. Great quotes. I've gotten pretty good failing. I believe I'm headed towards professional level failing. ;)

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  12. We all fail and many things throughout our lives. It's good though. Like rejection, it teaches us to get back up and wipe the dust off and go back at it.

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  13. Failure is a part of life. You have haven't failed, you haven't lived.

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  14. Thanks for all these quotes! I really appreciate you taking the time to share these with us.


    www.ficklemillennial.com

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  15. There was a keynote speaker at a project management conference I attended a while back (okay, a lifetime ago). He spoke on the subject of failure and it made me realize as adults, we want perfection the first time and it's not going to happen. And that's okay!

    "Success is not the absence of failure; it's the persistence through failure.+ ~ Aisha Tyler

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  16. Hi Bish - excellent quotes here and thank you for reminding us ... we can fail and life will continue - we need to learn from the failure and better ourselves ... it's just a pebble in the road - cheers Hilary

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Your Random Thoughts are most welcome!