“We often forget, however, that successful writer men those whoa re simply able to write brilliant first drafts; often, the writing we encounter has been
heavily revised and edited and is sometimes the result of a great deal of failure”
In the article “Failure can be an Important Part of Writing Development,” Collin Brooke and Allison Carr talk about the importance of failure for a writer to be successful. Brooke and Carr write that great writers are never born good. They often go through different stages of trial and error, editing, and rewriting of drafts to come upon a final draft. One of the essential subjects Brooke and Carr talk about is that “failure is an opportunity for growth.” They write that each author needs to make space for “quality of failure,” meaning they need to treat failure as something that each writer undergoes instead of treating it as a result of stupidity. Allison and Collin refer to Edward Burger (2012), professor of mathematics and co-author of The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking, explaining that the ability to be comfortable with failure and learn from it is one of the things that makes a writer effective successful. Learning from Anne Lamott, who describes “shitty first drafts” as the foundation for a successful final draft, free-writing is easily a critical aspect to building a final draft.
According to Collin Brooke and Allison Carr, many “students focus on not damaging their grades, creating a “fear” that works against the learning process,” forgetting that failure is an expected process of a successful outcome. Instead, they talk about how students need to focus on what brings the “bad grade” and work on that to get a better one. According to an article written by Andrea A. Lunsford’s “Writing Is Informed by Prior Experience,” Lunsford writes that our writing is a type of conversation we have with readers and writers. She explains that our past experiences influence writing and shape us into the ways we write today. (Lunsford, A). Brooke and Collin explain that no writer is born with a magical talent to think and write without making mistakes, and it is the capacity and ability to fail and learn from it is that makes us great writers.
One of the main things Collin Brooke and Allison Carr discuss in their article is that failure should be expected. Failure is what shapes us into becoming better writers and readers. Failure is an integral part of growth as a writer, and a successful outcome is only possible through failure and growth.
