Monday, August 24, 2015

How to Fail Your Way to Success.

This month I describe the method I'm following to become a best selling novelist:

For the last year and a half I've been working with writing coach and novelist Bridget Boland who most recently suggested this method. In fact, though, I've been using it for decades; first, to learn to play baseball when I was ten years old; then, to graduate from college; then, to improve my performance as a Peace Corps Volunteer; then, to become proficient as an advertising copywriter; and now to become a successful novelist.

The only success method that is steeped in failure.

With anything you want to accomplish, you're either a natural, or you're not. Here's my method for becoming successful at anything when you're not proclaimed a child genius; I call it ''Failing Your Way to Success.'' Follow these four steps:

Step #1: Try to accomplish something you really want to accomplish. Fail at it. (If you succeed, you can't use this method!)

Step #2: Find out why you failed. Ask others. Analyze it for yourself. Get to the root cause of your failure.

Step #3: The next time you try at this task, keep that root cause in mind. See if you can improve next time.

Step #4: Each time you fail or don't measure up to your expectations, fall forward until you do succeed to your satisfaction.

Imagine you're sculpting a standing figure out of a block of marble. Would you say it's advisable to finish sculpting the nose before beginning on other features of the statue's face? And would you say it's smart to finish the face before sculpting other parts of the statue?

I'm sure you agree that the smartest approach, and the one likely to lead to success, is to start with the end in mind. Rough out the entire standing figure, allotting space for the head, neck, torso, middle and legs. Then develop each major area of the sculpture.

It's the same when writing a novel. Working quickly, a novelist roughs out major portions of the story before finishing out each part.

As you go back over each part, you can assess how well your first attempt worked. If you decide it could work better, you try a different approach in hopes of getting a better result. This is called the experimental, or trial-and-error approach to writing.

I'm a trial-and-error writer.

I first realized that I'm a trial-and-error writer when I read an article by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Tipping Point and other groundbreaking works) entitled Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity? published in the October 20, 2008 issue of The New Yorker.

Gladwell calls Ben Fountain a late-bloomer because he was nearly 50 when he published his first book, a collection of short stories entitled, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.

I first dreamed of becoming a novelist when I was at The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in my 20s. Soon after graduating with an MFA, feeling frustrated and depressed, I gave up writing novels and short stories to work as an advertising copywriter, first in New York City and then in Dallas. I did not begin writing fiction for a second time until 2002, a few years shy of my sixtieth birthday.

Now, in August 2015, I have stretched this late bloomer thing as far as it will go. Even compared to other late bloomers, I am incorrigibly late. What I am certain will be my first published novel, a trilogy entitled Charging the Jaguar, a story about a Peace Corps Volunteer in the late Sixties who goes on the dark side when he falls in love with a FARC revolutionary in the jungles of Colombia, remains unfinished. I promise you and myself that I will finish it and publish each of the three parts as they are complete. (You notice I did not promise when, only that I would.)

Gladwell's article was a revelation to me for three reasons:

Some artists encounter greatness later in life.

1) I learned that I made the same mistake as so many others, i.e., confusing genius with precocity, the word that has always been applied to Mozart and others who achieve astounding creative feats at a young age. Gladwell mentions, ''Orson Wells [who] made his masterpiece, Citizen Kane, at twenty-five. [And] Herman Melville [who] wrote a book a year through his late twenties, culminating at age thirty-two, with Moby-Dick.

Gladwell debunks the prevailing myth that ''doing something truly creative requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth.'' He gives many examples that prove artists often come upon greatness later in life, two of the more interesting being the painter Cézanne and the novelist Ben Fountain.

Have you heard of Ben Fountain? His novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk,published in 2012 was a finalist for the National Book Award. When I read Gladwell's article in 2008, I had never heard of Ben although by then he had published an acclaimed book of short stories entitled, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.

I love Ben Fountain's Writing.

2. That was the second revelation I took away from Gladwell's article: After a bit of reading I discovered that Ben Fountain was a short story writer and novelist whose method, style of writing and subject matter I love; also the fact that he lives and works right here in Dallas makes things cozy. And here's the truly amazing thing: I actually met him years ago when he was a real estate attorney, and we both attended a dinner at the home of mutual friend in North Dallas. The reason he remembered me so many years after having only met me only once? I would like to think it was my brilliant personality; but, that was not the case at all. After meeting him I sent him an early version of this newsletter. He remembered my writing.

As I alluded just now, once I read Fountain's Brief Encounters, I learned that I loved the robustness of Ben's storytelling; its action and excitement which I found believable and engrossing. I don't respond that way to most writers. Overnight, Ben Fountain became my favorite contemporary fiction writer.

One other thing I learned that was nothing less than thrilling to me: The story in that collection I loved the most (and which Gladwell called ''one of the best'') is about an ornithologist taken hostage by the FARC guerrillas of Colombia.

Confronting the FARC.

In my novel my American hero, Jake Lancer, is never taken prisoner by the FARC, but, instead, he develops a relationship with a FARC soldier and begins to see the world through that soldier's eyes. He is then taken prisoner and interrogated by a CIA agent and a Colombian Army Intelligence officer because they believe he's sympathetic to the FARC.

This idea of a relatively innocent American having an up-close and personal encounter with the FARC: I didn't get it from Ben. I had been working on it before I read Brief Encounters in 2008. However, I did find myself tremendously encouraged by reading Ben's work. Obviously it depends on how well I write my novel, but I felt that if Ben could be successful with his story, perhaps I could be successful with mine.

3. Another revelation I got from Gladwell's article: I am an experimental or trial-and-error writer.

Gladwell's thesis is that precocious geniuses use the conceptual method of writing, where their works come out fully formed and finished. They have no use for experimentation. On the other hand, late bloomers like Ben Fountain use the experimental method of writing. They make a series of trial-and-error rewrites. As they do this, the work gets better and better over time until it springs to life fully formed with sufficient power and presence to turn readers into fans.

I also slowly honed my writing skills.

Another observation Gladwell made in his article about experimental writers: ''Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal.''

I've certainly experienced frustration while writing fiction. When I stopped writing fiction and turned to advertising copywriting I did so specifically so that I would not turn into a chronically depressed crank. .

And as though to prove his point about we late bloomers (Ben and me, ;-))) being perfectionists, he quotes Ben, saying (about the same story I loved so much in his Brief Encounters collection), ''I struggled with that story. I always try to do too much. I mean, I probably wrote five hundred pages of it in various incarnations.''.

One thing that should be said here: Behind my trial-and-error process is my determination to never fall in love with any of my failures. To see them for what they are and jettison them as rapidly as possible and to continually find better solutions. To continually move forward through the entire work that way until I'm satisfied.

Does that make me a perfectionist? I don't think so. With me, making it better isn't a disease that feeds on itself and never ends. I know when my writing is at a sufficiently professional level that it is ready to be sent out into the world to seek its fortune.

I'm gratified that this far into the process of writing Charging the Jaguar, I feel part of a movement of late bloomers who I would wager, in our own estimations, are never late. We perform on our own schedules; and, as far as we're concerned, we're right on time.