Anthony Doerr, winner of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, believes “We need to live with the fear that we will stink, that no one will pay any attention, that we will fall like trees in an empty forest: the fear that we are going to take our glorious, flawless, nebulous ideas and butcher them on the altar of reality.” “Not only is it OK to risk failure; it’s necessary.” Marlene’s Musings: Feel better now? If a Pulitzer Prize winner can think it’s okay . . . no, it’s necessary to fail. . . then let’s all fail. No worries about your writing. . . Go for it. Just Write! Quote from “Costume Drama,” Real Simple magazine, October 2014.
Tag: Anthony Doerr
Every day I fail.
“I’m a novelist. Every day I fail. My drafts — when I complete them, which is not often —are inevitably shadows of what I had hoped they would be.” — Anthony Doerr Sound familiar? Writers often experience failure. . . whether it’s receiving rejection notices or failing to complete writing projects. But . . . to not try, really, is to fail. So, if you have unfinished short stories, plays, poems, manuscripts. . . dig them out, blow off the dust and see if you can get back into this project. If not. . . move on to a new piece of writing. Anthony Doerr was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. And yet, he has doubts about his writing, just like the rest of us. “I can’t ever fully execute the glorious and inarticulable dreams in my head. Even on my best days, I just manage to cobble…