(By Cady Kooney)
It is often said that “practice makes perfect”, but as writers can attest that practice does not often lead to perfection. As writers, we are constantly going through the familiar process of trial and error. Our writing goes through multiple phases of revision, shifting, and editing. No first attempt is perfection, and that is completely okay. Writers should fail, because that failure can open up the window for more points of view or areas where they can improve. Failure is a scary experience, and often, writers will raise their own expectations too high because they are afraid to fail. If they take a step back, they can see that failure is so important to becoming the best writer one can be.
In the essay, “Failure can be an Important Part of Writing Development”, by Colin Brooke and Alison Carr, the authors express the importance of failure in a writing process. They believe students can feel so overwhelmed in their writing, especially if it is for a final grade, that they are afraid to fail. They argue that students experience a lot of shifting in their writing expectations over a small period of time, and teachers should have awareness of that and explain it is okay to fail the first time.
Students should be able to have the ability to see that failure means growth, and be okay with that. They state how there shouldn’t be this overwhelming idea in students’ minds that they have to write out a perfect essay with all the teacher’s requirements on the first try. Overall, they believe failing is something that is part of the writing process and the authors stress the importance of learning valuable lessons from trial and error during the writing process.
Reflecting upon this piece, I find that I agree with their view on failure. As a writer, I used to be afraid of failing at first. It was stressful to start a piece because I felt a need to make sure it was as perfect as I could make it right from the start. I never took a first draft for what it really is. I tried to make it flawless, even though the point is to jot down ideas and thoughts into a few paragraphs to dissect and restructure later on. The authors argue “One of the most important things students can learn is that failure is an opportunity for growth” (Brooke et al.). Learning this hard truth and accepting failure is difficult. No one strives for failure. But, students and writers should take failure as progress because it can show them the ways they can only make their writing better. In the end, as writers who want to succeed and improve find that failure is okay and needed to become great in the end.
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