Why Failure is Wonderful

This week has been a terrible writing week for me. I missed out on a mentorship opportunity that I desperately wanted, I didn’t get shortlisted for a minor prize, and I’ve had a couple of rejection letters. I did get that sick feeling in my stomach and I wondered if I am wasting my time with this writing business, but then I found an origami butterfly that memoir writer, Wayson Choy gave me when I was at uni, and I remembered why failure is wonderful.

I decided that there are probably some Ricochet readers who have had some rejections and don’t think they’re wonderful, so I thought I’d share an article I wrote not long after the 2009 Brisbane Writers Festival that’s about Wayson Choy, his origami butterflies, and why failure is a wonderful thing.

 

Why Failure is Wonderful

- Meeting Wayson Choy

When I went to the Brisbane Writers Festival in 2009 I was ready to give up writing. The feeling had been coming for a while. The uni year had been flying by, assignments were hard, and more than ever it seemed as though everyone in the course was competing against one another.  But most of all, I was tired of rejection.

 It’s not as though I didn’t expect to experience some failure. Since my first day at QUT I’ve been prepared for it. Tutors talk about rejection letters in classes, writers talk about their failures at book launches and festivals and in magazine interviews. I was warned—I knew rejection letters would come, and they did. Because I was expecting them, every time I found one in the mail box or read a competition announcement that didn’t list my name, I let it hurt, sometimes even had a cry, and then forced myself to move on. But the problem was that I never let myself think about the failures as anything but failures. I didn’t realise that failure can be a wonderful thing and that’s why, by the time I trudged to uni on the Friday of the Writers Festival, I’d given up. 

 Everyone in the class loved Wayson’s session, but I loved it just that little bit more. I loved hearing someone actually stand up and say that they wrote for money and that he wished he could churn out the sort of stuff that sells millions of copies. It was the first time I’d heard a writer talk about how cocky he was when he first started university. But when he started talking about failure, that’s when he got me. At first, I was horrified to hear his story. He told us about the first short story he wrote for a university assignment. He handed it in and was called to see his professor. Thinking that he was going to be praised for his brilliant writing, he swanned into the office feeling very pleased. But the teacher handed him back his story covered in red biro markings and said:

“Do you want to be a writer?”

Wayson told him yes, he wanted to be a writer and the teacher said: “Then learn how to punctuate.”

And he was dismissed.

At first he thought it was a terrible thing that he’d failed the assignment rather than been praised the way he’d expected. But then he bought some punctuation books and realised his teacher was right, he didn’t know how to punctuate.

He moved on to tell a story of how, as a teacher of creative writing, he fails every single one of his students on the first story. And as he hands their piece back to them he smiles and says, “How wonderful, you’ve failed.”

He talked about failure and rejection with a smile on his face and I couldn’t understand why. The thought of having a teacher smile as they handed me back an assignment I’d failed was horrible. I kept thinking I’d hate to be in his class. But I realised later it wasn’t complete failure that he was talking about. What he was saying to us was, “you still have things to learn.”      

By failing his students Wayson — in the same way his own professor did — was asking his students if they wanted to be writers. If the student took the criticism as an opportunity to improve their writing, they were answering, “Yes, I want to be a writer.” But those who allowed the failure to defeat them were clearly saying that writing was not for them.

 Later Wayson gave us a test. He handed out sheets of paper and asked us to make a butterfly in two minutes by only tearing and folding. Of course, all our butterflies were monstrosities and at the very end of his session, he showed us up by folding a perfect origami butterfly. While he was folding he talked about a butterfly’s metamorphosis.

 “A butterfly is a universally beautiful thing. But to get that way it goes through metamorphosis. It goes from being a little sluggy thing to a caterpillar and, from that, it sheds its skin a dozen times. Finally, it builds the chrysalis, hibernates and emerges a beautiful butterfly.

“The difference between your butterfly and mine is craft. I know the craft that goes into making one and you do not. It’s no different with writing. Writing has to go through metamorphosis to become something that’s considered universally beautiful.”

All the way home I kept thinking about failure and craft. I might have been studying the craft and expecting failures and rejection letters but I had always looked at the two as completely separate aspects of the writing life. I had never considered what Wayson was really saying was that failure is wonderful because it helps identify weak spots in the craft. He was telling me, if I get back a story covered in red biro, that’s a wonderful thing because now I know what I’m doing wrong. He was asking me if I wanted to be a writer. I realise now this is what other writers and tutors have been saying to me the whole time I’ve been at uni, but it just didn’t click with me until Wayson made me an origami butterfly.  

Since the festival, I have noticed a change in my attitude towards writing. I no longer hand a story to my writing group and hope to be praised. I hand things in and ask them to be brutal; I don’t want any more compliments where they’re not due. I want to be a writer. I want to learn the craft and see a metamorphosis in my writing and I want, more than anything, to experience the failures along the way that will ultimately make me a better writer.

 I don’t think meeting Wayson means rejection will no longer hurt. But now, every time I open one of those letters, I’ll smile and think: “How wonderful, I’ve failed.”  

 

Melanie Saward is a wonderfully failing writer based in Sydney.  She graduated from QUT’s Creative Writing program in 2009. Her stories have been published in the recent 100 Stories for Queensland Anthology, Ricochet Mag and the first issue of Rex, an anthology of writing from QUT.

Wayson Choy  is a Chinese-Canadian writer. You can read more about him and his wonderful books here.

Issue 3 available now

Ricochet Issue 03, featuring a splash of poetry, fiction and visual art for your viewing pleasure, is now available for download on the ezine page.

Life After Voiceworks: submitting for the not-so-young emerging writers

Dear fellow under-appreciated emerging writers,

Editors have it in for us don’t they? They all hate us, I bet. They see our name, wonder who the hell we are without an agent or a spot on the front page every second day and they throw our stories in the bin. This post is for you. This post is especially for the emerging writers with submissions so invisible that editors don’t even read them.

You see, if you’re over 25, your date of birth oozes out of your pores, pollutes the page with old and unaccomplished poison and renders the email or postal submission you sent out basically worthless.

I might be exaggerating – a lot.

But perhaps some of these thoughts did creep into my paranoid head somewhere between the first and last beer I had on the night of my 25th birthday, when my last hope for being published was taken from me with a big fat ‘too old’ stamp on my head.

I had to work out what to do when Voiceworks wasn’t available to me anymore. It’s a great journal for young emerging writers. It’s very open to new work, offers great feedback even when rejecting, and for a journal full of young emerging writers, gets a fair bit of attention. And once you turn 25, it’s hard to find somewhere like it to submit.

Thankfully, my initial thoughts were completely paranoid and there are journals out there that do want to see your work, even if you haven’t been published before. Of course, Ricochet is one of those journals. And worth submitting to coming from someone who is going to be in their third issue.

But I don’t think emerging writers should sell themselves short by only sending work to places that explicitly say they’re open to work from unpublished writers. It might not happen often but the heavyweights like Overland and Meanjin do publish work by unknowns if the work is of the quality they’re looking for.

On the flip side of course there’s no shame starting out in the smaller journals. Places like Ricochet, Page Seventeen, Visible Ink, Verity La, and Wet Ink are all looking for newbies to send them fresh words. See these journals as stepping stones toward greater markets. The name you get, the writing experience and the feedback from these editors can give you the experience you need to increase your chances of getting into the bigger places.

Another way I got a leg up was through experimental projects like Chinese Whisperings and Literary Mix Tapes thanks to eMergent Publishing and Jodi Cleghorn. Through an invite and some amazing editorial support, I’ve seen my work develop and I’m proud of these stories even if they didn’t go through the conventional route of the submission rat race.

There are always these kinds of opportunities coming up. It’s through connecting with writers, whether it be at the Emerging Writers’ Festival or on Twitter, that emerging writers can pool together resources and connections to find all those places wanting to read your work, even if you aren’t some big name.

Submissions for Issue 3 Closed

Hi everyone,

Submissions for Issue 3 are now closed. Thank you to all who sent in their fiction, poetry and artwork. We can’t wait to sit down and look through everything! We will endeavour to get back to everyone with our responses shortly.

Submissions for Issue 3 Open

Due to new study/work ventures on the part of the editorial staff, Ricochet has been very inactive these last few months, and for that I apologise.

No more! Though we will likely only get three issues out this year, thus renouncing our as yet unfulfilled role as a quarterly mag, I’m happy to say that we are now accepting unthemed submissions for Issue 3. We will be accepting work until Sunday June 5, 2011. So get creative, dream big – honestly, we want whatever crazy, provocative, scintillating work you can throw at us. As always, we look for short fiction, poetry and visual art, and our submissions guidelines are available in more detail on our submissions page!

Issue 2 available now

Ricochet Issue 02 is now available for download on the ezine page.

We hope you enjoy our contributors’ hard work and creativity!

Emerging writers enter the digital spotlight

Almost two months ago now, I finally stepped into the next era in reading and literature when I purchased my first eInk digital reader, the Sony Reader Touch. I was waiting for a wide variety of devices to become available in Australia as well as a wide variety of books, but I suppose you could still call me an early adopter.

I was interested in the format and getting into digital reading from the perspective of a reader but also as an emerging writer. Whilst Australia still has a little way to go for the mainstream reader, the current climate provides opportunities for the emerging writer to get in first.

Aside from loading friend’s eBooks and short fiction onto the Sony Reader, I wanted to load the books I was currently reading, was planning to read or resume reading again. They’re a variety of Australian and international writers published by both big and smaller publishers. I was disappointed to find that none of them were available, either at all or just in Australia.

The lack of eBooks available in Australia remains a problem and it’s definitely a barrier to people switching over. If I can’t get the book I want to read as an eBook, I’m forced to still read the printed version. The most frustrating barrier is when the book is available as an eBook online but restricted to only certain territories, usually the US. You really do question why a publisher would prevent someone from honestly paying for the book.

There are numerous reasons why certain books are unavailable digitally in Australia I found out after asking several publishers. Either it’s outstanding digital licensing agreements either for Australian territorial rights or at all – or to my surprise, just waiting for the books to be converted into the right formats. So a lot of publishers are on the way. This is welcome news.

For readers, there is still a while away before you can just load pretty much any book you could have bought in a bookshop onto a digital device such as my Sony Reader. For the emerging writer though, the ability to quickly and easily release your own work digitally provides a chance to experiment in ways that were basically financially out of reach for most of us when print had a monopoly on publishing.

Services like Smashwords.com provide avenues where a writer can easily format their writing in a word document and upload it to be converted into formats to be sold. They can be easily distributed for devices such as the Sony Reader, Kindle or iPad and iPhone.

I’ve experimented a bit with the service, releasing a collection of old writings as a bit of a sample. I wanted to replicate the experience where up-and-coming bands playing at local pubs sold copies of demos to spread the word and raise money. Digital publishing allows me to do that with little risk. The same could be said for print-on-demand technology.

I feel we have a bit more of an even playing field than we would in a bookstore, aside from the obvious factors of marketing and popularity. With many of the bigger names still waiting to be released into the digital world, there’s a kind of gap there for us to get in and see if we can get a bit of attention.

My collection is in the same catalogue on the iBookStore as Stephen King’s collection. I’d never imagine my little self-published eBook could do the same in a real bookstore.

There are of course ramifications to the risk. Does releasing a self-published collection devalue me as a writer or even the average quality of eBooks as a whole? The question is yet to be tested.

In an environment that’s unsure and quickly changing, these are questions worth testing. Whilst bigger publishers drag their feet, emerging writers have little lose when taking the spotlight.

Benjamin Solah is an emerging writer who coined his own genre, Marxist Horror. Aside from writing, he’s involved in political activism, performance poetry and blogging. His thoughts on digital publishing among other things can be found on his blog, Benjamin Solah, Marxist Horror Writer. His collection, Sanity Juxtaposed, can be found on Smashwords.com or the iBookStore.

Submissions for Issue 2 – Closed

Submissions for Issue 2 are now closed!

Thank you to everyone for sending in your work – we will be in contact shortly.

Getting somewhere in crazy, unfair book world

A friend of mine recently picked up a temporary job in a bookstore. When I asked how she got the job, she replied: “How does anyone get anything in crazy, unfair book world?”

The answer was that she used her networks. She got a nice recommendation from a reputable source, and got the job.

In just over a year of searching for a book job, I’ve learned a lot. I started out on a working visa in New York, thinking if I could get one, entry-level job, I could come back to Australia and walk into any publishing job I wanted. I thought I was aiming low, when now, looking back, I realise I was actually aiming for the Holy Grail without any experience to back me up.

In New York, I searched the papers, the Internet, and noticeboards for positions, assuming that everything was advertised. A lot of the time I didn’t even get a rejection letter, so I spent months not knowing if my applications were progressing, or if I was making some kind of mistake with every letter I sent. When I eventually decided to come home, I did the same thing and started to think there was something wrong with me.

The day I arrived to volunteer at the Sydney Writers’ Festival was the day I wised up. All along, people had been telling me that jobs aren’t always advertised, but I didn’t believe them. They told me I would have to meet people and talk my way into a job rather than waiting for an ad, applying, and getting it. I’m a bit shy by nature, so the thought of approaching someone and asking for a job felt rude. And frightening. But after spending some time talking to a lady at the festival who had no more experience than I did, but had a much better job than me, I realised people were right. I had to let people know I wanted a job before they advertised.

I spent my time in Sydney meeting people. I talked to everyone: other volunteers, SWF staff, patrons, and people at my hotel who saw my volunteer shirt. I told them who I was, and what I wanted to do. I didn’t ask for jobs or help, I just had conversations and built up my confidence.

After that, I went nuts with the networking: I went to every festival I could get to, I went to coffee with my former lecturers and asked their advice, and I enrolled in a post-graduate certificate at a different uni so I could make some new contacts. I started commenting on book blogs, I got a Twitter account, I went to book launches, and I helped the lovely Managing Editor of this magazine edit the first issue. I volunteered for the Brisbane and Byron Bay Writers’ festivals, and I worked in the office at BWF for two months before the festival. I worked hard, and made sure everyone I worked with (staff, volunteers…delivery drivers) knew what I wanted out of my career. By this time, I was starting to build a nice little network that included some local and interstate publishers, festival staff in three states, lots of Aussie authors, and a bunch of lecturers and teachers.

In the beginning, it didn’t feel like my networks were working. But just as I finished my volunteer job with the Brisbane Writers Festival, I got offered a contract with Red Hill Publishing. How? Well, by using my Twitter network to reach out and ask a question. I asked the managing director of the company if they ever took interns. A week later, they’d looked at my resume and matched my skills to a paid position.

It wasn’t just luck, it was the fact that I’d networked with the right person at the right time. I have no doubt that later on, if I get an internship or another contract, or the Holy Grail—a full-time, permanent job in New York—that it will more likely be because I’ve used my networks and asked questions.

So, for those of you struggling with the ‘how do I get somewhere in crazy, unfair book world,’ question, I think for most of us, the answer is more complicated than get a degree, get some experience, get a job. It certainly was (and still is) for me and my bookselling friend.

Now, I have a helping hand for those of you starting out developing your network. My job with Red Hill Publishing is managing an event called Publishing Boot Camp. It’s a one-day event in Brisbane next month that aims to help authors and aspiring publishers to understand the business of books. Some of Australia’s leading independent book publishing professionals will walk attendees through industry standard publishing workflow: editorial, design and typesetting, marketing, printing and yes, ebooks too.

Not only is this an education event, it’s an opportunity to build effective networks. It’s a chance to chat with publishers, writers, marketers, designers, and the other delegates. You can ask questions and establish connections that will ultimately help you along the way in your career. If you’re interested in coming, you should visit our website: http://redhillpublishing.com/events/bootcamp2010

We’re offering Ricochet readers a 10% discount off the full $330 delegate rate. Simply visit the website to register and enter discount code: RIC2010 and hit ‘apply’ to claim your discount. If you have any questions about the event, feel free to e-mail me: melanie.saward@gmail.com or leave a comment here.

I hope to see and network with some of you there!

Battling procrastination

So how do you all manage to juggle your writing pursuits with your job?

In my case, the answer is very poorly. I am a big procrastinator, so that plays its own role. At the end of the day, I would much rather face a bit of mindless television than a decent stint in front of the computer. And I think writing has become more of a discipline to me since finishing university – the pressures of producing something good, something worthy, have compromised my ability to become inspired, and I now tend to peck away at something for quite a while before I feel it’s at a quality good enough to be read by others.

Is this self-doubt a bad thing? Probably. In ways I think it can be helpful. It makes me check and recheck my writing, draft and redraft. But that compulsion is at odds with my hectic schedule, meaning that if I allow myself to pop in that DVD, very little gets done.

During my last year at uni, a modestly successful author come in to lecture to our writing class about her writing process. She claimed she had to literally schedule in 35 minutes of writing time at 10:00am, and 20 minutes of writing time at 12:45pm, and so on and so forth, to fit in around her kids and her job and her various other commitments. She seemed quite amazed (dare I say disgusted) at our lax attitude to writing, and the odd little quirks we had to perform in order to get ourselves in the mood for the task ahead; fixing a cup of coffee before sitting down, lining up bits of stationary in colour coordinated rows, checking our emails so the lure of the internet didn’t strike and ruin our productivity. She simply didn’t have the time to gather her thoughts; she had to get down to business right away and then forget about plot and characterisation and structure until her next ‘scheduled appointment’ with her muse.

I found her clinical attitude rather off-putting at the time. But I am now starting to understand where she was coming from. It’s hard to indulge your desire to clean or read or surf the net to put things off when you don’t have a lot of time to begin with. It’s a tough reality that the working writer has to prioritise just about everything else above that thing that we love. I try to write where I can; in small outbursts on the train, over my lunch break; when the neighbourhood has been subdued by sleep and the clock is ticking on the wrong side of midnight. It’s not always successful, but I remind myself that I have to get over those hang-ups messing with my creativity, or I will never write a damn thing.

Competitions of note coming up include the Ethel Webb Short Story Competition, closing on October 31st. Entries must not exceed 4,000 words, and there is a $7 entry fee.

The Brighton COW Short fiction Competition welcomes entries up to 3,000 words on any theme. First prize is £100 and all prize-winning entries get publication on the website. The deadline for entries is November 1st. A £4 entry fee is payable via the website.

The Poetica Christi Press Annual Poetry Competition closes on October 31st. They are accepting poems up to 50 lines on the theme ‘Horizons,’ and there is a $5 entry fee. The top 25 poems will be published in a 2011 anthology. The entry form is available for download on the website.

The 2010-2011 Neil Gunn Writing Competition closes on March 11th, 2011.

There are 4 separate sections of the competition. Adult prose (Narrative form) up to 2500 words, Adult poetry up to 40 lines, Secondary school (S3-6) poetry or prose and Primary school (P5-7) poetry or prose. The theme for the competition is ‘A Wrong Turning.’ Only the adult sections are open to all writers worldwide.

And in addition to our call for submissions of poetry, fiction and artwork for our second issue, we are now looking for bloggers to write on a variety of subjects to liven up this somewhat sporadically updated blog.

We are looking for articles about publishing opportunities, literature, ideas and perceptions about writing, and experiences within the industry. It would be great to have a contributor discuss overseas opportunities as well, so Americans/UKers, please don’t be shy.

If you are interested, shoot us through an email with an article you think might be relevent (500-1000 words) to ricochetmag@hotmail.com. If you would prefer to contribute a one-time only article, that would be great too, just let us know.