Your goal?: to write THE BEST STORY THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN.

But you’re not going to write the best story the world has ever seen. Not yet anyway. 

Before you DO write the best story the world has ever seen, you have to write not one- but MANY- crappy stories first.

Chuck Jones (famous for animating dudes like Bugs Bunny and Wiley Coyote) said, “You have a million bad drawings in your pencil, your job is to get them out so the good ones can follow.”

This fundamental truth can be said about ANY creative process– including writing.

But why write crap if you want an amazing novel? Shouldn’t you just write your best work all the time in order to achieve greatness?

Here’s the Problem:

Society believes in burying the crap and sharing only the gold. So all we see is gold and we don’t believe crap exists, period. But that toxic process teaches us to fear failure, even to hate failure. The “bury crap, share gold” mentality subconsciously trains us to avoid mistakes like the plague and only produce perfection– all the time. So, we hiss and scorn our ugly duckling projects and hide them until they are beautiful swans. And that’s just bogus!

Today, I’m smashing that concept because I’m sick of it. I’m instead talking about how producing crap (and embracing it) is the best thing you can possibly do for your writing career today. There are, not one, but three reasons why making mistakes and writing a crappy story is the most important goal you should have as a young writer. So what are these reasons?:

1. Failure is the best teacher
2. Manure is the best fertilizer for flowers (aka, crap produces gold)
3. Best-selling authors write crap too

So let’s celebrate failure and see exactly why you need to give yourself permission to write total, utter crap.

We are so afraid of making mistakes. Of doing badly. Of writing crap. Why? Why are we so terrified of this very human thing?

Because we are so certain everyone else is producing perfection and we’re the only one writing utter garbage. And we don’t want to be scorned for sharing anything less than the best.

But here’s the truth: everyone– and I mean EVERYONE– writes crap. Guess what? Your favorite author– yeah, they write crap too! In between writing all those best-sellers, they write utter garbage!

As a kid, you shouldn’t fear mistakes. This is the age where failure is a vital part of the growing process. This is how you learn what doesn’t work. Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” If Edison had been afraid of making mistakes, well, let’s just say we would ALL still be living in the dark 😉

Failure teaches you everything perfection cannot. Failure will challenge you to see things in a new perspective and try again. This healthy process allows you to truly grow as an individual, and most importantly grow into the individual you want to be, writer or otherwise.

So try this: create a daily mantra that shifts your mindset to embrace failure. Before you start writing, try saying something like this, “Failure is my best friend. Failure is not here to hurt me, it is here to teach me something I never knew before.” Or try something self-empowering like this, “I will allow myself to write garbage because it makes me a stronger writer.” 

Flowers literally use crap to grow into the most gorgeous, detailed, delicate beauties in all creation. So tell me something: why shouldn’t you, beautiful young seedling writer, do the same?

If we don’t allow ourselves to write a crappy story, we’ll be denying ourselves the tools required to write a great story. 

So how do you do it? How do you write a crappy story?

One of my favorite lessons I learned from Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass was how to write a crappy story.

Neil said, “Mistakes are the most important thing for a writer. You are going to screw up and try things that don’t work. You write a story you think is good but it won’t be. But it doesn’t matter, just get it out. And after you write a million words you will have finally found your voice.”

Flowers blossom over time. So write, learn from your mistakes, write something new with an improved outlook, repeat. And remember: do not rush the process.

Your favorite authors have had their fair share of failures and crappy stories. Yep, their first book wasn’t a best-seller. In fact, they didn’t hit the best-seller’s list in their first shot, nor did they achieve success overnight. But these authors deeply understand the importance of failure and, more importantly, cherish the lessons failure taught them.

“Who told us we had to succeed at any cost? But my own personal failure list? It’s a long one. You learn as much from failure as you learn from success.”

–Margaret Atwood

We wouldn’t have The Handmaid’s Tale if Margaret Atwood hadn’t failed writing a different book. As the story goes, she went on vacay and during that time, struggled to write a book. Soon after frustratedly giving up on that story, she started the terrifying dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale. So, thanks to writing crap, Margaret Atwood wrote a great success.

“It is better to know how to learn than to know.”

–Dr. Seuss

Dr. Seuss’ first book And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street was rejected not once, not twice, not ten but twenty-seven times by major publishers. But thank gumdrops this beloved author couldn’t take a hint! If he had given up, our childhoods would be empty of valuable life-lessons taught in the form of spunky poetry. So learn from the greatest Dr. of all, get right back up when you fall! 😉

“I discovered some old writing in my attic. It was the first 100-200 pages I wrote from the ages of 16-20. I wrote short stories then. They never really went anywhere. Three pages in, they’d sputter, flame out and die. At 21, I realized I had to start finishing them. At that point the improvement became quantum. As you finish things, you start to learn what it is that you did. You learn more from finishing a failure than writing a success.”

–Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman shares glimpses into his past in his Masterclass workshop. This glimpse was one of my favorites. It helped me to see that one of my favorite authors wrote stories he didn’t care for, stories he wasn’t particularly proud of. Yet, he cherished his craft enough to get the story down in writing and move forward. And we should do the same.

Amigos, nothing is learned if we repeat the same mistakes over and over again without the desire to learn something from it. So be humble, ask yourself hard questions, and study up on your craft. 

And remember, even with a better outlook, a new perspective, and an improved education, you must still allow yourself to write crap and grow again. Life is a continual process of learning, making mistakes, growing– on repeat. Your craft is all about that cycle, so LOVE the cycle! Don’t skip any steps and you’ll grow into the author you want to be.