Award-winning novelist Toni Morrison has contributed a piece to NEA Arts Magazine. For this issue, every article focuses on the topic of “failure.”
Morrison (pictured, via) feels that “as a writer, a failure is just information. It’s something that I’ve done wrong in writing, or is inaccurate or unclear. I recognize failure—which is important; some people don’t—and fix it, because it is data, it is information, knowledge of what does not work. That’s rewriting and editing.”
Morrison also shares her thoughts on “recognizing when something isn’t working,” “learning not to overdo it,” and “stumbles along the way.” Many writers have publicly expressed similar opinions on failure including Harry Potter series author J.K. Rowling, Fight Club novelist Chuck Palahniuk, and Trigger Warning writer Neil Gaiman. How do you deal with failure?