I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. — Michael Jordan
If you want to succeed as a writer, you must give yourself permission to fail. Not just once, but an unlimited number of times.
Goals can be killers.
As soon as you convince yourself that your dream is impossible, you will quit. Why? To avoid further embarrassment. Scrap the goal, and you avoid having to wear the failure label.
The right goal is life-saving.
Telling our stories can save us and others. Jesus said, if we acknowledge him on Earth, he will acknowledge us in Heaven. But if we let anything keep us from our stories, then he won’t acknowledge us before the Father (Matthew 10:32–33). If we believe what Jesus said, then we should be busy telling our stories, constantly learning to tell them better.
Focus on the right goal.
Unfortunately, we’re tempted to judge success by the world’s standards. When we worry about what people will think, we can lose sight of how easily we please the Lord with our effort. Like a mom who loves her three-year-old’s drawing with all the wrong colors and strange shapes, God loves our stories about how he has changed our lives, no matter what form they take.
Pursue God’s dream.
If we keep writing and developing our stories, we’ll know what God’s dream for us is. So we should keep doing it, keep learning, and keep getting better. And that’s sure to reveal successes that are better than anything we can imagine.
A secular writer has to sell thousands of books to be a success. If a Christian writer sold only one copy, but it changed someone’s life, he would be a success. — Terry Burns, Retired Christian Literary Agent
