In a recent appearance on Marc Maron’s “WTF” podcast, Howie Mandel stated that a big part of his success in show business has to do with “being comfortable with discomfort.” It’s so obvious, sure, but that verbalization of a simple truth really struck a chord with me.
In fact, I’ll take Mandel’s statement a step further (well, maybe it’s just a slight repositioning, but hey, I want to feel like I’m contributing too) and put this out there:
You need to be comfortable with failure if you want to become a better writer. It’s not a matter of if you’ll deal with falling short, it’s a matter of when.
Even though I’m lucky enough to make my living as a scribe, I still deal with failure every single day. Whether it’s a big corporate project or a personal blog post I write for my own amusement (or catharsis), I’m usually in a state of discomfort.
It’s literally my default position.
Despite that, I wouldn’t have it any other way, as far as my process goes. At the end of the day, failure doesn’t slow me down or diminish my writing ability; instead, all it’s done is made me stronger.
