As writers, many of us share lofty goals like writing 1,000 words a day or getting our work published. I’m here to tell you, though, no matter how long you’ve been writing, you will experience failure—failure in meeting your writing goals, constructing a proper sentence, and especially in getting published.

We all experience failure. It’s what makes us human (that and a bunch of biological stuff, but we won’t get into that). The important thing is we don’t let ourselves get consumed or defined by those moments of failure. Instead, we should acknowledge and learn from them—see them as opportunities for growth in our craft, our confidence, and our character. Here are some ways I’ve learned from my failures and built my writing confidence back up from those moments.

Failure to Meet Writing Goals

Weather your goal is to write 1,000 words a day or finish your novel by the end of x amount of months, odds are you’ve fallen short of what you set out to accomplish at one point or another. I personally try to write 1000 words every day. That said, most days I’m lucky if I even write a single sentence.

At the beginning of this series, I wrote a post on how you can motivate yourself to just write. But how do you handle the feeling of failure when you can’t get yourself in front of your computer to fill that blank page with words?

For me, I take a moment to acknowledge—to accept—that feeling of failure, whatever that might look like. (Cut to me crying in a corner.) But then, I examine the situation and try to identify what went wrong and prompt myself with a few questions.

• What was it exactly that I failed to do?
• Why was I unable to reach this goal that I set for myself?
• How realistic was my goal?
• How can I prevent this failure in the future?
• Who/what can I turn to for help?

By asking myself these questions, I get a look at the bigger picture. More than just failing to hit 1000, I realize that maybe writing that many words isn’t realistic for me. Or maybe there are hurdles that I can address/move out of the way to make it easier for me to actually sit down and write. Once I’ve done this, I can approach the next day that comes my way with a bit more confidence.

The Write Sentence

Feeling like a failure doesn’t just comes from not hitting your goals, it also comes from actively working on them.

One of the things that frustrates me to no end is when I actually do sit down to write but struggle like a mother fucker to write anything of substance. I can’t seem to translate the scene I have in my head on to paper. Sentences come out simple, lacking creativity, and also contain multiple miss-spelled words and god-awful grammar.

I’ve come to learn that no matter what you do, you will have writing that reads like hot garbage on you first draft. So how do you get past this failure and rebuild confidence in your skill? Edit. Edit. Edit.

For me there are two stages of writing: 1) getting the words on the page and 2) editing. I try to remind myself that the first draft of my story or blog post (and maybe even the second and third drafts) will be shit and that I can always fix it when I start the editing phase. I do this so that I don’t lose my writing momentum.

So, in case you need to hear it, you can worry about the grammar, the run on sentences, and the lack of creativity/flowery language later. You will have the opportunity to edit. For right now, just write.

Failing to Get Published

Getting published has been a goal of mine for a while now. But it’s been hard. I’ve submitted my work and it’s been rejected a handful of times. The reality is, many well-know writers had their fair share of rejections. It comes with the territory. Still facing rejection can be tough.

If there is one thing I learned from my rejections, it’s to take a moment before revisiting the rejected piece. Is this good advice? I don’t know, but it’s a rule that I follow. It keeps me from manically gutting the story after it’s been rejected and enables me to come back to it with fresh and kinder eyes.

My other piece of advice would be to keep track of your failed submissions. It may sound strange, but there is a hierarchy to the kind of rejection you receive. I get into a bit more detail on this in my pervious blog post My Story Was Rejected: 4 Lessons I Learned. Essentially, there are three types of rejections you’ll get as a writer: flat-out rejections, rejections with general feedback on your work, and rejections with specific feedback on your work and that encourage you to submit again.

Why should you keep track of these rejections? Because you can learn from them. You can get a sense of when a work is improving and which publications are best suited for your work.

If you’re interested, I created a free Google Sheets template that can help you keep track of your submissions to publications.

Accept Failure as a Writer and Keep Writing

Every writer has faced failure, weather it is keeping up with writing goals, constructing a proper sentence, publishing their blog on a regular basis (sorry), or even getting rejected by a publication again and again and again. Being a writer is like many other professions out there. You will face challenges, but what makes you a writer is the courage to keep writing and learning from your failures—to find and build the confidence to pick up that pen or dust off that key board and keep on writing.