As the old year slips quietly into the night, you take a look back at what you didn’t achieve. And from this viewpoint, holy smokes does it look an awful lot like…failure.

The 80,000 word count never materialized. The book sits unfinished.

You are an official Nanowrimo dropout.

You self-published a book and sold 3 copies. Your mom bought all three of them. Because no one else knew your book even existed.

The editor who was interested in your book changed publishing companies and you couldn’t break in there even with a crowbar.

You see what didn’t come to pass, what you couldn’t make happen despite the butt-busting days and even longer nights. Success in 2016 was as elusive as Big Foot riding a unicorn.

The You Can’t Fairy whispers in your ear that she told you to be more realistic. To stop dreaming so big. This fairy tells you to quit before you experience any more failures. She shakes her head, purses her lips, and tells you that something is obviously wrong with you if you didn’t find the success you were looking for.

She whispers that writing is just not for you. And besides, achieving success as an author is almost impossible, especially if you’re a new author. She feeds you all the gloom and doom statistics about the publishing world.

She might seem like a tiny, winged annoyance but she actually looks something like this:

Ignore her. Embrace failure. It means you made an effort at something you cared about.

Failure happens to everyone. You’re not all by your onesie there.

Failure prompts growth. There’s no greater teacher than experiencing failure. It forces you to improve, to learn new ways to reach your goals. It teaches perseverance, causing you to want to hold on to your dreams until they become reality.

Failure isn’t comfortable but…

So move forward into 2017 and fail successfully.