50 Shades of Grey has just become the world’s best selling book of all time, but let’s just say it’s not for its literary style [note for the Mars Curiosity Rover and other off-worlders, it has a lot to do with S&M and not much else].
Much like the blockbuster Twilight series, 50 Shades‘ writing has been knocked many times for its poor writing, but leave it to an expert to deliver the killer blow – Ken Levine.
Dom Smith is a writer – it’s just that his full-time job gets in the way. He is also the first to join the Considered Words community as a contributor, and is brave enough to want to start with a Writing Failure.
If you’d like to write for Considered Words then see this simple guide to doing so.
Flaws, pride and rejection
I wrote a book.
It was a good book, I thought. Many of my friends told me the same. I knew it had flaws, and my friends and family saw them too. An agent read it and gave me feedback. It was great feedback, it was useful feedback, it was constructive feedback. Unfortunately, the feedback was ‘we can’t sell this, and here’s the reasons why….’
“I like to succeed in public, but to fail in secret.” – David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man
I don’t blame David Ogilvy, for like the best (and worst) of people I too like to keep my failures secret.
This may be due to too much pride – pride that I want to be a success in all that I do, pride in believing that the wider world really cares about what I do, for better or worse.
In the same way that I know that I should have a side of salad instead of chips, or get up an hour early to fit in gym before the office, I know I should find something to learn from my failures.