Failure Is Not Optional

What I learned about writing from the Phillies crashing out of the World Series race…

I’m a fan of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team.

(Thank you for your condolences. Visiting hours will be between 6 and 8 pm)

One of the things I love about baseball is the fact that it’s not over until it’s over, when suddenly, nail-bitingly, it is.  (Like last night. Ugh.)

But as I’ve become more of a fan of the game, other lessons have become clear that I think we writers could do with pondering.

Failure is A Big Part Of The Game

Everyone says ‘you have to get lots of rejections to get published’, and that ‘shitty first drafts’ are part of the process, but I don’t think we give enough energy to learning to love those realities.

In baseball:

  • Elite players fail 70% of the time they step up to the plate.
  • Failing 75% of the time impresses nearly everyone..
  • The league’s worst hitter this year failed 80% of the chances he got (and hasn’t been fired).

These players keep striving even when the game is this mean to them.

Where’s The Hole I Can Crawl Into?

The Phillies’ 2025 World Series dreams ended on a rookie mistake—a horrifying, painful, embarrassing flub by a young pitcher, who made the wrong split-second decision.

In. Front. Of. Everyone.

Then he had to go out and talk to the press about it, afterwards.

I’m not sure I could have done that.

Of course, the media-trained young pitcher said all the right things like, “this sucks right now”, “get over this hump and keep pushing”.

City of Brotherly Grit

I hope he can find the resilience and courage to do that in the face of humiliation and doubt (and the famously vocal Philadelphia fans), even if he has to borrow that grit, occasionally, from the people around him.

If he can, I believe he will be extraordinary, as a player and as a human.

Selfishly, also I hope he succeeds because I need regular, visible reminders that this kind of determination is possible. I’d love him to be my model of how the pursuit of excellence requires courage and resilience and a willingness to carry on in the face of failure and even humiliation.

What It Takes

If that young player thrives, it’ll be down to:

  • The years of practice at failure and rebounding that already lie behind him 
  • Continuing to hone his skills, even as a professional
  • The support of a team (of family, friends, colleague, and coaches) who shepherded him through those early years and the team he has around him now who will help him get better and keep his chin up
  • The inner work he continues to do to master the discomfort of striving for excellence

Sounds like a good plan, in sports, life, and writing!

You’ve Got This

This week, if you want to:

Practice A Lot: consider Writing A Holiday Story, taking the 3-Day Challenge, or sign up for Writing Prompts & Lessons every week for a year

Work on Your Skills: Follow along with the StoryADay Challenge warm-up tasks

Rely On Your Team: consider joining our upcoming Critique Week (registration opens on Sunday). You’ll have a team of supportive, experienced players to help you see your story clearly and keep your chin up.

Work on Your Inner Game: consider booking a “Writer’s Therapy” coaching session with me.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. Have you signed up for the StoryADay November Challenge yet? Remember: set your own rules, and then use the community to help you stick to them!

Join The Discussion

Do you have a lot of resilience around your writing? Do you wish you had more? Do you ever (go on, admit it) resent the fact that things seem so hard? Leave a comment and let us know.

Ready to turn those sparks of wonder into finished stories?

StoryaDay 3-Day Challenge

Take the 3-Day Challenge and write three short stories this weekend!

find out more

Take the 3-Day Challenge — a short-story writing course you can finish this weekend. Go from “idea” to “The End” in three days, and give yourself the gift of an achievement you can celebrate.

Writing To Entertain

How cultivating wonder can keep your creative energy flowing, and why it’s so important to nurture it…

I recently caught an old interview (from 1974) with Harold Robbins. Apparently at the time he was the world’s best-paid novelist. You’d think that would cause the man to be self-important and precious, but when asked by the interviewer “Why do you think your books sell so well,” he answered, simply:

 “A novel is primarily an entertainment. And if the novelist forgets that, he’s lost.”

Write To Engage

Every month at StoryADay.org I set a theme for the articles and activities. Each one supports a part of the writing life, so that we can continue to build a satisfying writing practice, month after month, without becoming overwhelmed by trying to do everything–learn everything, master everything–at once.

This months’ theme is ‘Engage’, and I think that’s why I found Robbins’s elegant formula for writing success so appealing. 

He never forgot that his job was to engage with the reader.

Who Do You Write For?

When we first answer the call to write, we tend to say we’re writing for ourselves. Some of us continue in that vein forever, and that’s absolutely fine. 

Writing for pleasure, for mental health, to quiet the voices in our heads, or because it makes us easier to live with…these are all valid reasons for writing, and you’ll never hear me say you ‘ought’ to be doing it for any other reason or outcome.

But when people become serious about writing, and aspire to be published, there’s a trap waiting, and it’s this:

When we become serious about our writing, there is a temptation to plunge into all the courses and classes and critique groups, where other writers are trying to figure out what makes it all work.

There’s a danger, in trying to figure out if we’re using all five senses, and creating tension, and making our characters’s dialogue sound real, whether we’re showing not telling, and avoiding headhopping…that we forget job 1: to engage the reader and entertain them.

I’ve read lots of manuscripts that contained technically beautiful writing and bored me to tears. 

How To Engage Readers

“If you start with people that are valid, if you start with people that are exciting, people that mean things to the reader…you find that people identify with the character.” 

Harold Robbins, Parkinson (BBC TV 1974)

Making sure that our writing, first and foremost, is engaging for a reader is absolutely key. 

It explains why books like Fifty Shades of Grey do so well. 

Everyone who knows anying about what makes ‘good writing’, agrees that they are ‘terribly badly written’, and yet somehow millions of copies sold to people who were thoroughly engaged in the story of characters who are written in a way that’s never going to win any literary prizes. 

So what? It’s engaging!

Your personal tolerance for a mix of  ‘page-turner’ to ‘literary language’ in your own writing will be just that: highly personal.

But I certainly find it encouraging to think that in 1974, the highest-paid novelist in the world was willing to share the secret of his success and it was simply this: write about characters who feel real, in a way that readers can identify with.

No more. No less.

Makes it feel a bit more manageable, doesn’t it?

Join The Discussion

What about you? Do you obsess over perfect grammar and beautiful imagery, or do you skew towards creating entertaining romps? And are you–as I am–convinced that the best stories have a bit of each? Leave a comment.

Ready to turn those sparks of wonder into finished stories?

StoryaDay 3-Day Challenge

Take the 3-Day Challenge and write three short stories this weekend!

find out more

Take the 3-Day Challenge — a short-story writing course you can finish this weekend. Go from “idea” to “The End” in three days, and give yourself the gift of an achievement you can celebrate.

Reconnect With Wonder

How cultivating wonder can keep your creative energy flowing, and why it’s so important to nurture it…

This time last year I was able to travel to Scotland for a very happy reason — to party with my my parents on their 60th wedding anniversary.

The journey didn’t exactly go smoothly, but travel always offers the opportunity to see things in a new light: for example our inexplicably cancelled connecting flight from London to Glasgow turned into an impromptu  train journey up the west coast of the UK, past Industrial-Revolution-era factory towns1, old canals, rolling hills, fantasy-inspiring forests, and seas of purple heather. 

I couldn’t stop looking out the window.

The locals? They were watching The Matrix on their phones2.

It’s hard to maintain a sense of wonder in your everyday environment. But not impossible…

And that very sense of “wow” is what fuels our writing.

Why Wonder Matters for Writers

When we’re focused on creating the finished product — a story for a market, a novel in a particular genre — it’s easy to become anchored by expectations. That, in turn, kills our curiosity, our willingness to take risks, our sense of having fun.

And it defers all the opportunities to feel accomplished until “The Project Is Over”.

What a drag.

Cultivating a sense of Wonder brings back the fun.

 It awakens your curiosity.

It keeps possibility alive.

PLUS behavioral scientists assure us that celebrating those little sparks of joy is what help you stay motivated for the long haul.

Practice Off the Page

Athletes don’t just show up for the game — they drill, train, and practice behind the scenes.

Writers need “practice time” too. 

Think of some things you can do this week, away from the page, to exercise your Wonder muscles:

This “non-product-related” time feeds your creative brain.

Ways to Find Wonder

(Without Buying a Plane Train Ticket)

  • Change your route home from work. Notice what’s different.
  • Switch your grocery store. See how the new one is arranged.
  • Wind down the car windows and pay attention: the smells, the temperature, the sounds.
  • Order something new at your coffee shop, then describe it in writing.
  • Talk to a stranger. Find out what lights them up.
  • Visit an odd museum you’ve been ignoring (National Mustard Museum, anyone?).
  • Pull a random nonfiction book from the library shelves and leaf through it.
  • Look closely at weeds in a patch of earth — the shapes, the colors, the insects, the cracks they grow through.

This Month’s StoryADay Theme: Triumph

At StoryADay, Triumph means celebrating every tiny win. Spotting wonder counts. So does jotting down a phrase, or noticing a Story Spark like: the exact way you could represent the rhythm of rain on the roof.

Small celebrations keep you energized, curious, and writing.

Your assignment this week

 Go somewhere new (or look at somewhere familiar in a new way) and find one small thing worth noticing. Write a few sentences about it — just for you.

Ready to turn those sparks of wonder into finished stories?

StoryaDay 3-Day Challenge

Take the 3-Day Challenge and write three short stories this weekend!

find out more

Take the 3-Day Challenge — a short-story writing course you can finish this weekend. Go from “idea” to “The End” in three days, and give yourself the gift of an achievement you can celebrate.


Join the discussion:
Where did you find wonder this week? What tiny moment felt worth celebrating?

  1. Welcome, fellow fans of the board game Brass… ↩︎
  2. Woah! ↩︎

Creativity: Bringing People Together

People are easily led. Let’s lead them to joy, through sharing things they can love.

Last night I got to be part of the audience, doing something like this

Jacob Collier is an extraordinary musician who does not do what he is told, or what others before him have done1.

A few years ago he started experimenting with asking his audience to sing a note, then conducting them in a multi-part harmony, just by pointing at them. It’s quite something2.

Bringing People Together

When so much about our public life is awful, and terrifying, and despair-inducing, it can be tempting to think that taking time out for moments of joy is somehow trivial or disrespectful.

It’s not. It’s essential.

Bringing people from all walks of life together to experience something—collectively, as at a concert or asynchronously, as with reading a good story—is important work.

It’s important that you write your stories.

It’s important that you make them good enough to share. 

Because sometimes, when people come together and share a moment of joy—singing in unexpected harmony or sharing their love of a sarcastic security cyborg—it reminds them of how alike we all are.

Bad actors try to assemble their followers into a scared, exclusionary huddle.

It only takes one courageous person’s vision to bring people together for good.

Art matters. 

Stories matter.

Your voice matters.

Keep writing,

Julie

P. S. It can be hard to gather the motivation to do the work in the face of, well, everything. Here’s a brand-new workbook to help you reconnect to your practice or your project. Download it now, as a thank you for following along on this writing journey with me!

  1. Which doesn’t mean he’s a contrarian. His commitment to doing what he does, how he likes it, has led him to friendship with Quincy Jones, and a deal with Martin guitars where they produced a 5-string guitar for him, because he thought ‘why does a guitar have to have six strings?” ↩︎
  2. I’ve been in choirs where we could not sing acapella and stay in tune. Last night, he led thousands of people through a long improvised harmonic thing and then brought back in an actual orchestra…and we were still on pitch! ↩︎

Who’s On Your Internal Coaching Team?

Do you have an inner critic or an inner coach? And which voice will help you become creative, happy, fulfilled writer?

…and is it time to fire them?

Remember the ancient times of last summer, during the Olympic games in Paris, when the media was flooding us with feel-good stories about quirky folks who had dedicated their life to pursuing excellence in one, extremely niche activity…and everyone thought it was cool?

Good times.

One story that stood out to me was the US Gymnastics team’s commentary on how much happier they were now that they had new coaches—coaches who motivated them with praise and love, rather than fear and shame.

Oh, and they still somehow managed to win the gold medal.

Who are your internal coaches modeled on?

When you’re trying to motivate yourself to write, do you have: 

  • A big, scary guy with a megaphone, barking at you and shaming you for not being perfect?
  • An indulgent hippy mom who says ‘that’s ok, whatever you feel like doing is fine’—even if that ‘whatever’ isn’t helping you reach your goals OR feel fine?
  • Or have you worked to install a positive, loving voice that tells you to set tiny goals that you can exceed and who encourages you to celebrate like mad when you reach or exceed them.

Guess which voice I’m going to recommend recruiting to your internal coaching team… 

Celebrate Success, Every Day

Habit experts, like BJ Fogg, tell us that outsized celebrations for achievable goals are key to maintaining a new habit. 

Lay down those dopamine pathways in the brain by getting up and punching the air every time you meet your new wordcount! (It feels silly, but it helps your brain associate ‘writing time’ with ‘feel-good time’.)

Productivity experts, like Adam Grant, tell us that striving for perfection is a fool’s errand. 

Instead, of aiming for ‘perfect’,  try to make your work ‘perfectly acceptable’—that’s what experts and high-performing professionals do!

Cal Newport tells us it’s OK to slow down, to take one task at a time and do it as well as we can, today.

Performance experts, like Jim Murphy, tell us that “judgement and curiosity cannot co-exist. When we judge someone or something, curiosity goes out the window, and with it, creativity.”

Is It Time To Fire Your Inner Coach?

If the voice in your head is an old-school, 1970s-style gym teacher, screaming in your face every time you perform less than perfectly, perhaps it’s time to consider firing your inner coach.

Instead, invite in a more modern approach, like those used by high-performance athletes, executives, and, yes, writers, today.

Voices that say“

  • It’s ok to take your time; just keep moving
  • It’s good to rest; just make a plan for when you’ll start up again
  • Don’t judge; instead, be curious
  • Don’t try to be perfect; just try to trend upwards
  • Don’t compare yourself to anyone except you: yesterday, a year ago, ten years ago. Remember how far you’ve come
  • Be inspired by other people’s success, not envious or threatened; they’re raising the standards and giving you a reason to strive to be better
  • Celebrate every tiny triumph along the way; got to your desk? Punch the air! Opened your manuscript? Pat yourself on the back. Met your word count for today? Dance party in the kitchen!

Fear, shame, and bullying can get results for coaches, but not for long.

And you’re in this for the long haul, right?

Start cultivating modern, fair-but-firm internal coaching voices, that encourage you to live up to what you know you’re capable of, and who also remind you that one bad day is not the end of the world.

Join the discussion: What do your internal voices sound like? Where do you think they came from? What might a more-positive, productive voice say, instead?

Build Better Characters (Today, Not ‘Some Day’!)

Or: Be Your Own Casting Director

Listen to the podcast episode that inspired this post

Readers don’t fall in love with stories because of clever twists or thrilling events. They connect because of characters—flawed, funny, furious, fragile characters who make us feel something. 

If you want to improve your writing—and your readers’ response to it—mastering character creation is one of the most satisfying ways to do it. 

But I don’t want you to go and read a book about character (David Corbett’s “The Art of Character” is great, but at 380 pages, will not leave you much time to write, this weekend). 

So here are some practical ways to think about and craft characters that leap off the page and grab your reader by the heart. 

And you can get started by building a stash of character building blocks, this weekend.

Why Character Matters

Characters are the heartbeat of your story. They don’t just exist in a setting or respond to a plot. Nope. They drive the plot. 

Every decision a character makes causes ripples. They mess things up, fix them, sabotage themselves, fall in love, hate the wrong person, take the wrong job, say the wrong thing at the worst time—and that’s what creates story.

Thankfully, you don’t have to invent every character from scratch on the day you sit down to write. (That’s a guaranteed way to find yourself staring at a blinking cursor for 45 minutes and then convince yourself that doing laundry counts as productive procrastination. It doesn’t. Nice try.)

Instead, do yourself a favor: build your characters now Then dip into this little treasure chest any time you’re short on inspiration or just need a quick-start push.

Start With What You Know

Your first batch of characters? Make them like you.

Yes, you. The person reading this. You are the perfect inspiration for at least five characters. And no, they don’t have to be “you” in the obvious ways.

Start a list of five characters who share something with you:

  • Hair color? Sure.
  • Your love of spreadsheets? Perfect.
  • Your ability to cry at pet adoption commercials? Gold.

You can use your own internal traits too: your introversion or extroversion, your conflict-avoidance, your snarky sense of humor, your perfectionism, your unshakeable optimism, or the way you freeze up when someone asks where you see yourself in five years. All of it is fair game.

These characters are easy to write because you’ve lived in their skin. So when you’re stuck and short on time, they’re your go-to. Let them loose in your stories.

Bonus points: Write down which of those traits delight and frustrate you. That’s where the conflict lives. That’s where the story is.

Characters NOT Like You

Made your “like me” list? Great. Now, do the opposite.

Write down five characters who are unlike you. These are the ones who baffle or irritate you, or maybe the ones you secretly wish you could be. Pick traits you don’t relate to:

  • Someone who’s smooth-talking
  • A fearless adrenaline junkie.
  • A meticulous rule-follower.
  • Someone who thrives in social chaos while you’re ready for a nap after five minutes of small talk.

Think about how these traits might cause trouble—or create strength—in a story. How does an overly confident character screw up a sensitive situation? How does a shy person save the day because they notice what everyone else misses?

Again, note the conflict potential. Conflict = story. Always.

Add Color

Characters aren’t just about personality. Let’s dress them up a bit—literally.

Make a list of ten accessories or physical features that a character might have. These details are powerful shorthand in short stories. You don’t always have space to dive deep into every side character’s backstory, but you can make them memorable with:

  • A red umbrella with a duck-shaped handle.
  • A constantly rumpled trench coat.
  • Neon-green glasses.
  • A nervous habit of jingling keys.

These are little anchors for your reader’s brain. They give your stories color and texture—so everything doesn’t start to feel like a blank-stage play with floating heads and indistinct voices.

(There are useful for main characters but also a great way to make a secondary character pop.)

Get Quirky

Personality traits can show up whether your character wants them to or not. These are the reflex reactions, the annoying habits, the self-sabotaging instincts that make people people.

Think of five traits that drive you bananas in real life (or delight you—if you’re feeling generous). Use those.

Maybe your character:

  • Always expects the worst.
  • Can’t say no.
  • Over-apologizes.
  • Constantly tries to “fix” people.
  • Never sees the good right in front of them.

Then for extra credit, jot down how each trait might be subverted in the story. Turn the annoying trait into a strength. Make it a liability that forces change. Or let it spark unexpected humor.

Let Them Speak

Finally, give your characters their own voice. Not just dialogue—voice.

List five expressions or phrases people in your life overuse. Think of the office cliché machine, your grandmother’s weird sayings, or the barista who always says “rock on” no matter the situation.

Give each character a verbal tic. Let one say “bless your heart” with venom. Another can end every sentence with “you know what I mean?” even when no one does. These quirks do double duty: they reveal character and make your dialogue sparkle.

Don’t wait. Make these lists this weekend.

Stop waiting to get “good enough” to write great characters. You already have everything you need: your quirks, your annoyances, your people-watching superpowers. 

Use them. 

Make your lists. 

Keep them handy.

 And when it’s time to write—today, not someday—you’ll be ready.

Make a mess. Have fun.

And, of course, keep writing.

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