Episode Transcript

First-Time Novelists Who Didn’t Quit

I was talking to a writer last week who’s been sending proposals to agents on his first novel. He has a great proposal. He’s very clear about the story he’s telling. He’s sent his query to about 50 agents. Some rejected him outright. Others asked for the first few chapters and then passed. some sent the standard thanks, but no thanks.

But a few asked for the full manuscript based on those early chapters, and one in particular passed on the novel, but took the time to tell him why and invited him to submit again down the line. Whether it’s months from now or years from now, she wants to hear from him again.

Failure As Fuel

Now, this is a first time novelist who has collected about 50 rejections at this point. But here’s the thing – he’s not deflated by it.

When the agent took the time to tell him why she was passing on his novel, he took her feedback and made those changes the best he could. He went back into the manuscript, took her criticisms seriously and made it better. And now he’s engaging editors to help him get the story irresistible for his next round of submissions.

I had a look at his manuscript recently, and it’s genius. This is his first novel. He didn’t see rejection as failure. He used it as fuel to get better at his craft – to be a better storyteller, better at structure, better at slowing down at just the right places. I have no doubt he will publish this book sooner rather than later.

Learning From Feedback

Then I think about another writer I had the privilege of working with who just self-published her book. She never takes my editorial feedback as criticism. She learns from it. She takes it as an opportunity to make her novel better. She applies it really fast, and when something isn’t working, she doesn’t spiral.

She fixes it and she moves forward. Failure is simply not a category hr mind operates in.

Two different writers, two very different paths, but the same essential thing running through both of them.

They treat every setback as a redirect – not a verdict.

In this episode, I’m going to talk about what failure actually does inside a writing project and why the writers who finished their books are not the ones who avoid failure. They’re the ones who run toward it.

They’re the ones who understand the opportunity that setbacks are giving them.

The Misconception About Failure

I happen to think failure gets a bad rap. It’s something we’ve been taught to fear, to avoid, to treat as evidence that we don’t have what it takes. But when you think about it, there’s no such thing as failure.

Here are three truths to keep in mind.

Truth 1: The gap between your vision and your ability is not a flaw.

It’s just not synced up right now. It’s a stage of your development. Ira Glass once talked about this idea of taste and ability. He said something to the effect that “You got into writing because you have good taste.”

You can recognize quality. You know what a strong scene feels like, what a compelling character looks and sounds like. What a well constructed story does to a reader. But for a long time, the work you’re producing isn’t as good as your taste. And that gap is one of the most dangerous places in a writing life because it’s where most people quit.

They quit because they can see the distance between where they are and where they want to be, and they interpret that distance as evidence that they don’t belong here.

I see this constantly with writers. They read back what they’ve written and they know it isn’t quite right. They can feel it. And instead of reading that feeling as useful information, they read it as proof that they’re not cut out for the writing life.

But here’s what that gap actually is.

It’s a redirect. Your instincts are firing. You can see what the work needs to become. The gap isn’t telling you to stop. It’s pointing you from the draft you wrote towards the draft the story is asking for. Think about any skill you’ve developed. Even walking. When toddlers are learning to walk, they fall down. Their bodies are loose and wobbly. They haven’t built up the physical strength or balance yet. But they don’t quit.  They get right back up and try again with joy until their legs get strong and walking becomes second nature.

A lot of writers think they should be better at this. They have a story in their mind and they can write. But storytelling on the page is a very different skill.

That window between understanding what good looks like on the page and being able to produce it consistently is not a sign you’re in the wrong place.

It’s a sign you’re in the middle of developing.

The writers who close that gap are the ones who keep writing through it. Not because they’re more talented, but because they didn’t mistake the redirect for a stop sign.

When your draft feels like it’s falling short of what you imagined, that feeling is your good taste doing its job.

Don’t silence it, but don’t let it stop you either. Write toward it. The gap is showing you the direction.

Look For the Gain

And here’s another way to look at it.

Instead of focusing on the gap between where you are and where you want to be, look at the gain. How far have you actually come? What can you do now that you couldn’t six months ago?

The gap shows you where you’re going. The gain reminds you that you’re already moving.

Truth 2: Bad drafts are not wasted work.

I want to challenge something that’s probably sitting in the back of your mind right now. The idea that the hours you’ve put into a struggling draft might be wasted.

If you keep going and it doesn’t work, all of that time was for nothing. Maybe you’ve been working on your story for years.

None of that was wasted. That’s not how writing works. The bad version of your book has to exist before the good version. You can’t skip it. It’s a structural reality of how drafts develop.

Every chapter you’re not happy with is redirecting you. It’s showing you where your protagonist’s motivation is thin. Where your pacing loses air. Where you’re writing what you think should happen instead of what the story is actually asking for.

You can’t learn those things without writing those pages.

The struggling draft is doing diagnostic work that no outline, no planning session, no amounts of research can do for you. Only the draft itself can show you where the real story lives.

Think of it this way. When builders pour a foundation, the concrete isn’t the finished floor. It’s rough and nobody will ever see it, but the house can’t stand without it.

Your first draft is the foundation. It’s not the house. The mistake is treating it like the house.

Your messy, inconsistent, not-quite-right pages are pointing you somewhere. Follow them. Trust the draft enough to finish it.

Truth 3. Quitting mid-project does not protect you from failure.

It just makes it permanent.

I know the logic of stopping. it goes like this:

I can’t figure this story out. I’m wandering around in the middle with no raft. If I quit now, at least I’m not wasting more time on something that isn’t working.

Maybe you got feedback that dismantled everything you believed about your ability to write.

Maybe 50 agents have said no and you see that as proof that you don’t have what it takes.

What that logic misses is that quitting mid-project is already the outcome you were trying to avoid.

An unfinished manuscript is not a safe position. It’s a closed door. The book that gets finished, even imperfectly, even after rejection, even after three rounds of revision, is still in the game.

The book in the drawer is not.

You can’t discover what your book needs if you abandon it before it shows you. You can’t be redirected by failure if you quit before failure has anything to work with.

Finishing is what keeps your options open every option, including the ones you haven’t thought of yet. The writers who go the distance are not the ones who are certain if it’s going to work.

They’re the ones who decide that finding out is worth more than not knowing.

The gap between what you’re writing and what you want it to be is not a stop sign. It’s your vision pointing you in the right direction.

The draft that isn’t working yet is not wasted time. It’s the foundation. And walking away from a project mid draft does not protect you from failure.

It just closes the door before the work has a chance to redirect you somewhere better.

Failure isn’t a wall. It’s information. The only question is whether you stay in long enough to use it.

Links Mentioned In This Episode

Ira Glass on the Creative Process

Story Clarity Worksheet

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