The result of fear is a life half lived. We will never reach our full potential and we miss out on so much. Example: Hiking through the hills during my scouting years, I strode down the middle of the path, head down, eyes scanning the brush for snakes—due to ophiophobia (fear of snakes). I missed out on enjoying good times and laughs with friends, taking in the scenery, and all because I couldn’t get past my fear and enjoy the moment. My fear controlled me on those hikes.

The idea for Speak No Evil captured me from the moment it arrived. A teenage girl who had been through so much trauma, she became afraid to speak. Every time she spoke out about things that had happened to her, something worse followed. Melody’s silence was her fortress — the walls she put up against encroachment by the outside world. But it became her prison.

To say that I fell in love with the story immediately may be an understatement. I was itching to write it. The characters were fantastic. The story compelling. It haunted not only my dreams but also my waking moments. But other than capturing scenes and making notes, doing research, I didn’t write.

Why didn’t I dive in? I’m no stranger to reaching the end of the story only to realize while the concept is good, the words on the page are a hot mess and need a LOT of editing. I’m one of those writers who actually enjoys most (not all) of the editing process because that is what makes the work shine. But still I wouldn’t write it. I was afraid.

Afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle the story in the way I saw it in my head. Afraid the story was bigger than my talent as a writer. The LAST thing I wanted to do was to fail Melody — fail her story.

Any time I would think about starting a draft, the little gremlin on my shoulder whispered in my ear, but you’re not ready. I had allowed fear to stop me from sharing this story.

Then, after a couple of years and a swift verbal kick up the backside from Italia Gandolfo, I conquered my fear … well, conquered is probably too strong a word. I told my fear to hush because the time had come. Then I put the butt in the chair and fingers on the keyboard.

“You will never learn to fly if you let someone else carry your wings.”

My characters talk to me … and not always about the story. As I got to know Quatie Raincrow, Melody’s first foster mother, she said, “You will never learn to fly if you let someone else carry your wings.” It’s one of the first things she said. The context? A scene that never made it into the book. The scene itself wasn’t important, but the words were. They were meant more for me than for the story at that point.

It’s true. If you don’t strap on those wings and take a leap of faith, you’ll never learn to fly. It’s about having courage to do the things you’re passionate about. So it has become a personal motto of mine. When I hang back and don’t move forward into a new venture because I might fail, I take a deep breath and put my wings on. Am I going to fail? Yes, but I’ll dust myself off, and try again. Usually the thought of failure doesn’t hold me back, but when it does, I know I need to strap on those wings and reach for the sky.

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Up until that point, I either wore Mary Janes with a buckle, or my mom tied my shoes with laces. So I sat down, absolutely certain I would know how to tie my shoes without any assistance, and couldn’t. The shoelace wouldn’t behave. All the times I had watched my shoes being tied, and I couldn’t make my fingers do the right thing at the right time. FRUSTRATING.

I asked my mom, whose patience is legendary, for help and she showed me (loop, swoop, and pull) more times than I can count. I put shoes on my bed and practiced. Dad taught me a different way — two bunny ears. Stupid shoelaces. More than one way to tie them and I failed at both. I despaired. I’d NEVER get to go to school.

I sought out our next door neighbor — she’d be able to teach me — and learned to put my thumbs in the loop and pull. Except when I did that, I pulled the laces straight through and had a knot, but no bow. I experienced a gamut of emotions from despair and frustration to anger and self-loathing because I couldn’t figure out how to do what every other person in my life appeared to do with ease. Once in a while, I’d have a moment of hope dashed by subsequent failure. I’m sure I must have cried more than once, and I know I yelled several times, “I CAN’T DO IT!!!” and a shoe or two might have taken flight.

Though I didn’t know it at the time, there were several factors making this an exceptionally trying lesson to learn. I am dyslexic, though it has rarely impacted my ability to read, it shows up in other forms. I also have control issues fine motor skills which is due to arthritis. The combination perhaps made learning to tie my shoes a more difficult endeavor. BUT no matter how frustrated I became, or how many times I “gave up,” I kept trying. Why? Because my desire for success (the right to go to school) was bigger than my frustration.

Achievement of a goal is attainable only if you are willing to keep failing until you succeed. Succinctly put, failure is critical to success. My ability to tie my shoes is founded on failure after failure that I eventually conquered.

So what is the conundrum surrounding my arch enemy, the shoelace? Time marches on and with it improvements and conveniences have been created. We have shoes with velcro and bungee laces that don’t require tying. Parents (and teachers) everywhere gave a huge sigh of relief. No more do they need to have the patience of a saint while waiting on a kid (or several) to tie their own shoes. No more frustration in attempting to teach a child to tie their own shoes. HOW can this be a bad thing?

Learning to tie your own shoe is a child-level rite of passage. And while it may appear trivial on the surface, it is an important part of our development. Without spelling it out, it teaches us the value of perseverance. It teaches us the value of failure. It teaches us about gut-level determination. And it teaches us about the joy and pride of achievement.

Alternatives to shoelaces are a great boon for parents, but we’re robbing our kids of one of the first critical lessons they might remember. If we clear the path for kids so there are no obstacles that must be overcome to achieve a goal, then what happens when later in life obstacles have them boxed in? They have no experience with failure and learning how to cope with it and turn it into success. We have lost the ability to make an assessment of how much we value the success that we’re striving for and put a price on what it is worth to us to achieve.

Learning to tie your shoes when you are 4-years-old has a MUCH BIGGER pride factor that comes with it because you know you have achieved something great … you have proven you are no longer a baby, but a big kid. Learning to tie your shoes at 7 or 8 is not the same thing because there is the feeling that you should have been able to do it earlier. No one else thinks it is such a great feat either.

I am a fighter. When I see an obstacle in my path, my thoughts are on how to get under, around, or over the obstacle to achieve my goal. I don’t give up. Just as we need to exercise our muscles to keep our body healthy, and exercise our brain to keep our mind sharp, we need to exercise our determination. It’s the Tubthumping concept. If we don’t practice getting up when we get knocked down, we won’t achieve our goals.

It seems a bit contradictory, but we need adversity to achieve success. We need to practice failing to learn how to do things right.

What method finally worked for me? I closed my eyes and made up a story. A bunny running around a tree and diving into a hole (loop, swoop, and pull) to escape a fox, and then closed the door, by pulling the laces tight, so the fox couldn’t get in. Stories reign supreme.

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You’ve done it. You conceived of a story idea, sat down and wrote ALL the words and finally reached the point where you typed The End. You’re exhilirated. The world will gasp and hold its sides at how perfect your story is. It is, without a doubt, a work of art … sheer poetry in prose form.

I’ll be honest … I feel like I’ve just run a race when I reach the end of the first draft of any novel I’ve written and like I should be taking a victory lap. It is a HUGE accomplishment, and one we can all be proud of. Except the completion of the first draft is equivalent to reaching the starter’s line for the race, not the end. The first thing I do on completion of a first draft is put it away and go on to the million-and-one other things I have to do, whether it be starting a new project or polishing up an old one. I need fresh eyes before I go back and look at the masterpiece I have just penned … because I need to be able to see the mistakes. And they are there, I can promise you that.

Let’s say you’ve finished up the story, read through it again, confirmed your own conviction that it is wonderful and you send it off to be read by someone else. Someone who has a critical eye, because that’s what your story needs, someone to find those things that aren’t quite right to help you make sure it is the best story it can possibly be.

Then your story — your perfect little story — comes back and looks as if Jack the Ripper and the Warwick Slasher were having a contest to see who could rip it up the most. It is bleeding with red ink and your feelings go from confidence to failure in two short seconds. Thoughts start chasing each other in your mind. How could it be so bad??? Why did I think I could write in the first place?? Maybe I should give up? You have failed to achieve the effect with your story that you wanted. It’s OKAY. Failure is embedded in the fabric of success. No one achieves perfection the first time out. And in writing, I daresay no one achieves perfection. So let’s change how we view failure.

It has become popular to make fun of people’s failures … in fact, there are memes (Nailed It!) dedicated to mocking failed attempts. And yes, the attempt failed, but at least they tried. Something the mockers didn’t do. And here is the thing about failure, it is only the end result if you give up on trying to achieve your goal. You failed … so what? What did you learn this time to make the next attempt better? Because every mark on that story represents an opportunity to learn and improve your craft.

I am always extremely thankful for all of the red marks. Someone else has taken the time to help me see things I was blind to to help me make my story the best it can be. Does that red mark represent a failure? You bet, but it also represents something that can be fixed now that I am aware there is a problem. I really like the acronym for FAIL — First Attempt In Learning.

Instead of feeling down because we have not achieved perfection, we should relish the things we have learned through trying and failing. Does it mean we have more work to do? You bet. But nothing makes me happier than making my story better and stronger. Success is built on the back of failure — when we choose to learn from those failures.

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