Miscellany
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Oct
1
I sometimes think the fear of criticism is my biggest obstacle to writing. It’s a terrible dilemma: I want people to read my work, but I’m worried that when they do they will realize my flaws and mock me endlessly for them.
I doubt I am alone in that fear.
But a friend of mine shared a favorite quote of his by our illustrious former President and man’s man Teddy Roosevelt:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Roosevelt was a pretty impressive guy so I could see this having some credibility. After all, as my friend Roberto pointed out, he finished a ninety-minute speech after being shot in the chest by a would be assassin. With critics severe enough to shoot him during speeches, he had to know a thing or two about keeping a positive attitude.
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On the subject of quotes, this is one of my favorite quotes about the fear of failure and criticism.
Thomas Edison was once interviewed about his process of inventing the light bulb. When asked how he felt about failing 10,000 times before achieving a working prototype, he replied, “I didn’t fail 10,000 times. I just found 10,000 ways not to make a light bulb.”
I think sometimes we forget the value of our “mistakes.” There is a great comfort in knowing that once you mess something up real bad, you’re not likely to mess the next thing up in the same manner. So with every criticism, of both ourselves and others, we learn one new path that our writing can attempt to discover.
We so often forget the value of everything we do. We worry about what the finality is, more than the journey.
Through that effort, we grow. That moment is edifying, and it has value too, even if the end result isn’t what we would want.
Whether it be 10,000 failed filaments, or 10,000 garbled words, the journey had us becoming something better, gradually.