failure

IMG_2542On the wall right in front of my desk a piece of wire like the type used to hang paintings, looks sort of like the wires they have in coffee shops or such for art to hang on.

Hanging on mine are notecards, five sets of notecards. They are labeled as follows:

  • Programs
  • Stinger-Man
  • Memory Globes (one of the underlying cards pokes out with just the word “whores” showing)
  • Justiciar
  • The Four

Programs is a collection of programs I have never written, and the other four are stories or ideas for stories in various states of completion. But, they, both note cards and the whole hanging system, are failures.

Utter failures.

I have not written a word on the stories up there in at least a year, and I could not tell you what programs I have not yet written either. But, I keep them up.

Why?

One reason is that they remind me, that even in the face of failure, work continues. And some days I need that. I need to know, as Adam from Mythbusters loves to say, “failure is always an option”. The talent/skill is know when that time has come. When it is time to cut bait and move on.

Another reason is that I don’t ever see a writing or programming project as a complete failure. There is always a corpse to pick over. There are ideas, characters, lines, processes, methods, etc. that I might be able to use somewhere else. At some point I will fillet those old ideas, transfer them into the new system (there is always a new system) and pick up what I can.

Keep writing and make each day better than the last.

-luke

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