All sorts of interesting takes on what "failure" and "success" are for writers, both as writers, and as people:<br />
<br />
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/22/falling-short-writers-reflect-failure<br />
<br />
I specially like Anne Enrights, though Howard Jacobson is interesting, grumpy bugger though he is...<br />
<strong>Edited by EmmaD at 09:18:00 on 06 January 2015 </strong><br />
<br />
Ooops! Sorry I left off the subject line. I wonder if anyone will actually click through?

<BR>Edited by EmmaD at 09:21:00 on 06 January 2015


I added it, Emma
Anna

I clicked through, purely out of curiosity about a thread whose subject was showing as just a hyphen 

The article is a difficult read, though, as you start off wading through gloomy stories of what failure means before you get to the success. I'm not sure I've ever come at things in quite that mindset.
 

Thanks, Anna.

Alex, I guess they start with the gloom, in the sense that they want to set up the "usual" idea of "failure", as it were, before exploring what's really going on.
 

Yes, I suppose going from "success" to "failure" might be even more gloomy to read.

It's interesting that so many people think in that way, though. Maybe it harks back to our school days, when we sit exams and are judged to have either passed or failed.

I wonder what Stephen Hawking's take would have been? Perhaps a bit more of a rollercoaster than the others?

Great article Emma, thanks - and anything that has Margaret Atwood in it (to me, anyway) has got to be brilliant :-)