Chasing Failure

Last week I went to see Paul Haggis being interviewed at the TIFF's new permanent location. I have to admit, it was pretty cool and he said a few things that made me nod my head and think, oh, I should do a DWT blog about that! But clearly I'm getting old, or I've been very distracted, or both, because I forgot most of them.

But one comment was during the Q&A. Someone asked about him about the importance of failures. Haggis had talked during the interview about a few TV shows he'd developed that he really loved and believed in that either never got picked up, or got canceled right out of the box, like EZ Streets. And he also talked about how he'd been shopping the scripts for both Crash and Million Dollar Baby for years before he managed to get the money together to produce them. 

And his answer to the person who asked (a young filmmaker) was: run hurtling toward failures. Pursue failures, because that's the only way to succeed.

I thought this was good and brave advice... because really, if we aren't doing this in some way, aren't we playing it safe?

I dunno. I suppose it's just another way to say, take risks, pursue your wildest dreams, do it the way you want to do it... but I think it is kind of freeing to think about chasing down failures. Hey, don't we writers actively pursue rejection and criticism in a way?

Is this too negative a way of thinking about this? I can't decide...

Fear

I am trying to embrace fear. Normally, I am not a fan. I'm not a big watcher of horror movies despite having written an urban fantasy with werewolves and vampires and other nasties. I do not like being startled. I read the ends of books before I get there because I need to know that characters are okay at the end. Yes. Even when I'm reading romance and should just trust. I fear for them and it's unpleasant for me.

I have written a book proposal that is scaring the hell out of me. Two writers that I admire very much have recently (within the last six months or so) talked about how the book you're afraid to write is probably the one you should be working on. The fear means you care enough about it to get it right. The fear means you're stretching. The fear means you're doing something important.

So . . . fear is good. It's not the mind-killer (that's for all you Dune fans out there). It's the mind-grower. Okay. I'm embracing fear.

I'm also trying to embrace vulnerability. I'm not so crazy about vulnerability either. Sometimes being vulnerable is just asking to be hurt and I don't care for pain. If I could spend my entire life encased by the Tempurpedic topper on my bed, I totally would.

Vulnerability means putting out there something tender and fragile that's important to me. This book that I'm trying to write is important to me. I care about what I'm trying to show people in this novel. Exposing the ideals that I want to live by is a little scary because I'm also showing why it's so very hard to do that. It's what will make this book interesting and not preachy and not pedantic.

Anybody else have a project like that out there? Something that's scaring the pants off you, but feels imperative at the same time?