{"id":2500,"date":"2021-01-20T23:40:29","date_gmt":"2021-01-21T07:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shescribe.com\/?p=2500"},"modified":"2021-01-20T23:40:31","modified_gmt":"2021-01-21T07:40:31","slug":"youre-gonna-fail-so-do-it-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shirscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/20\/youre-gonna-fail-so-do-it-quickly\/","title":{"rendered":"You\u2019re Gonna Fail, So Do it Quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have not failed, not once.  I\u2019ve discovered ten thousand ways that don\u2019t work.* — Thomas Edison<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The above quote is often attributed to Thomas Edison regarding the advancements he was making with the lightbulb. I put an asterisk by it because it\u2019s unclear the exact wording he used, or even if he said something along these lines at all, but my mom would tell me this from time to time whenever I felt discouraged by failure, so there you go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Failure has always been a tough one for me \u2013 that and rejection (which I guess is a type of failure), I loath them both. Especially if I go hard at something or I really want something, to not get it is almost an unbearable disappointment. It takes me forever to recover, forever to want to venture out and try again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet the older I get, I\u2019m realizing that I ain\u2019t got time for all that. But in actuality, it really doesn\u2019t matter how old you are \u2013 you could be 18 or 80, nobody got time for that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Failure is gonna happen \u2013 I don\u2019t care how smart you are, how cute you are, how capable you are, who you know and so on. Failure is gonna happen, so you might as well do it quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now that doesn\u2019t mean you approach things hastily, or you do a half-assed job at something \u2013 you want to do your best. Just don\u2019t procrastinate for fear that you aren\u2019t good enough. And if you happen to fail at whatever you took a chance on, get over it quickly as well. Reevaluate and try again, or try something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently, I had an opportunity to put this advice into practice myself. Remember that scriptwriting contest I was telling you about in my last post? Well, I never entered it. Turns out you had to pay for a membership in order to enter the contest \u2013 just a little minor detail I seemed to have overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know, there\u2019s something about paying to enter a contest that just doesn\u2019t sit well with me. Like, I don\u2019t pay to submit a job application, and I wasn\u2019t about to pay for this. It was only $30, but still. That\u2019s $30 I could do something else with.  I\u2019ve paid to enter a contest once before \u2013 I think it was like $20 \u2013 and immediately regretted it. It was a short story contest, and by the way, I never heard from them again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funny thing is, after reading the submission agreement, which outlined the control they would have over anything I submitted to them, I was having second thoughts even before I knew about the $30 fee. Then I saw there was a charge, and I was super leery.  Now I know I just said in the paragraph above that I wasn\u2019t about to pay to enter the contest, and while deep down that\u2019s truly how I felt, on the surface, I was still questioning. I mean, long shot or not, I don\u2019t know anybody in this business, I have no idea how to break in by any other means.  When you think about it that way, $30 is a small price to pay to potentially embark upon a movie career. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conflicted as I was, I continued to explore the contest\u2019s website. I perused the FAQs and learned that you had to upload your script by January 6th<\/sup>, even though the contest rules say January 15th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the contest webpage didn\u2019t make clear is that essentially to participate in this contest you had to become a member of this organization, and part of being a member is uploading scripts to their site. Once you are a member and you already have scripts uploaded to the site, you had until January 15th<\/sup> to submit to this contest. However, if you were not already a member and you didn\u2019t have a script on the site, you had to have uploaded a script by January 6th<\/sup> so that the script was active on the site for at least a week by the time you submitted the script on January 15th.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So on January 14th<\/sup>, when I was not a member, and was trying to decide if I should spend my $30 and submit my script, the decision was already made for me \u2013 it was too late.  I discovered yet another way, I would not be starting my movie career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the funny thing is (and I realize I use that expression a lot, but hey, what can I say, it\u2019s fitting) even though I had no idea how I was going to \u201cbreak into\u201d the movie business outside of this contest \u2013 still don\u2019t \u2013 getting this news was surprisingly quite a relief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s a totally different attitude towards failing than I had three years ago, the last time I submitted a movie script to a contest and didn\u2019t get it (though this time I technically didn\u2019t submit a script). Once I realized I didn\u2019t get it \u2013 and I say realized, because I wasn\u2019t formally contacted. The rules stated that if you don\u2019t hear from them by January 31, you didn\u2019t get it.  So when January 31st<\/sup> rolled around and I didn\u2019t hear from them, I was devastated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was like woe is me, and what am I gonna do now \u2013 yeah, the works. You see it took me three years to even submit to a contest again, don\u2019t you? But this time, I was just like, okay \u2013 I\u2019m okay with that. That just wasn\u2019t for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the longest time I thought winning meant never losing. That a winner is somebody who wins most of the time if not all of the time. And even when I realized that wasn\u2019t true, it\u2019s still hard to get out of that mode of thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, I see an exit sign up ahead\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realize now that no matter who you are, failing is inevitable. I have a lot more failing to do, so I might as well do it quickly, get it over with, hop to it, let it make way for my wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Besides, there\u2019s more than one way to win. I mean there are conventional ways that we all know, recognize, and desire, like getting accepted into a top school, getting your dream job, getting promoted, getting awards and the like.  And granted, those are sho nuff wins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there are also other wins, like helping others, cultivating your best self, being resilient, having someone to love and someone who loves you, your relationship with God. Though we tend to downplay the significance of these things, without them, life would really be fucked up.  Even the more conventional wins are made better when you have these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I say go on, take the chance, take the L, fail quickly, win again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have not failed, not once.  I\u2019ve discovered ten thousand ways that don\u2019t work.* — Thomas Edison The above quote is often attributed to Thomas Edison regarding the advancements he was making with the lightbulb. I put an asterisk by…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[207,98,227,228,229,225,226,14,230],"class_list":{"0":"post-2500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-career-and-goals","7":"category-on-my-mind","8":"tag-advice","9":"tag-failing","10":"tag-fear-of-failure","11":"tag-movie-scripts","12":"tag-screenwriting","13":"tag-what-it-means-to-win","14":"tag-winning","15":"tag-writing","16":"tag-writing-contests","17":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nYou\u2019re Gonna Fail, So Do it Quickly - Shirscribe<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When a writer, with a crippling fear of failure, fails again, she reexamines what it means to win.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/shirscribe.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/20\/youre-gonna-fail-so-do-it-quickly\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"You\u2019re Gonna Fail, So Do it Quickly - 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