Screwing Up vs. Failing Up

Writing is a parade of mistakes and rewrites, and even that doesn't cover all the things that can go wrong. A three-hundred-page manuscript can fall apart with just a few bad pages at the end. Many well-intended essays can go completely sideways with a few poorly-placed words. And yes, even when all the words are the right ones, sometimes a piece can completely miss its target. This is a terrible fate for a piece of writing, but it's not a judgment of our work as much as it is an opportunity for us to do better.

Some of the more famous screw-ups have been very well-intentioned and purposeful, but they just ended up going in the wrong direction because the weight of the words were taken the wrong way. There was a very famous book written at the turn of the last century (yes, over 100 years ago) that was a scathing indictment of all the failings of capitalism while also backing the virtues of socialism. Surprisingly, this book is still standard reading in many schools, and was responsible for a lot of legislation getting passed that would change our way of living forever. Can you name it?

Well, chances are, you can't name the book by the way I described it - a pro-socialism book - but that's what the author intended it to be. It showed through a narrative tale about how a family was destroyed by an industry that exploited both its workers and customers, and our main character eventually supports a socialist cause that sympathizes with his cause. However, its writing about commercial exploitation was quite vivid and disturbingly drawn out, while the political side was actually quite boring. See the problem? The boring part was supposed to be the big hit of the book, but it didn't get the readers' attention. What drew all the views was the graphic descriptions of the meat-processing industry in the early 1900s. Yes, the book I refer to is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. It inspired the famous Meat Safety Act of 1906, and did very little to rally the socialist cause. As Sinclair said later on, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach." Oops.

Sinclair's folly, however, should not be a sign that he screwed up. As a staunch socialists, his motives were obvious, but his writing persuaded a different demographic to take action. The laws that followed did put controls on wildly out-of-control exploitation by businesses in the industry, but it was a far cry from what he hoped. In this regard he didn't screw up - he failed up. He didn't achieve his goal but he still wrote something that changed the world a little bit.

When we write, we need to give ourselves the liberty to fail up - to miss our target but still produce something impressive and thought-provoking. Not everyone who reads your work - be it a book like The Jungle or an essay or poem - is going to walk away with the same impression. Hopefully, you will get your message to the intended audience, but even if you miss, you still reach people. As long as you write with conviction, your words will be persuasive. Just give yourself a gut-check now and then to make sure the words you write match the statement you want to make. Be honest and observant of how you convey your message, and you won't screw up.