Personal Narrative: A Career As A Professional Writer

"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor" (BrainyQuote.) The great deal of hardships in my life led me to be successful. I dealt with abandonment for much of my life. I failed at many thing in my life but writing was not one of them. I became famous after I failed many times. I am one of the most famous and controversial figures in contemporary American literature (DIScovering authors.) My non-fiction books, journals, and characters were greatly influenced by my lack of love as a child.

Life offers many lessons and one of them is failure. One of my failures happens to be writing high school essays. I also believe without such failures, I would have never gotten over my fear of failure. By failing high school papers, it allowed me to get to know myself and learn from my mistakes. I expect to grow my growing and change my mindset on writing.

When I look at the word failure I didn’t see success. But that slowly changed as I read the book What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain Chapter four. Bain, for me and I’m sure many other, have changed our view point on failure being a bad thing. He instead expressed failure as an “opportunity to learn something.” (121) As infants we grow and develop, we learn to walk by falling down a couple hundred times, and we learn to speak by babbling. By trying to walk, and trying to talk, we may fail at first. As an infant, you cannot give up when you are face to face with failure. You must get up and try again to learn. In the book, What the Best College Students Do by Ken Bain he uses people’s experiences and research to explain why failure is an opportunity to learn something new, rather than seeing failure as something bad. He asserts “people who become highly creative and productive learn to acknowledge failures, even to embrace them, and to explore and learn from them.” (100) Failure is important. If we did not get up and try again as infants, we would not be where we are today.

The short story, The Right to Fail by William Zinsser, explains how it is acceptable to fail and learn from one's mistakes and to not go down the path society has made socially acceptable. Zinner has a positive outlook on the concept of failing, he explains, “Success can be dangerous- you feel you know it all. I’ve learned a  great deal from my failures.” As life goes on, everyone may not succeed the same way or even succeed at everything they attempt to do, but it is important to learn from mistakes and continue moving forward and to find the path that works for you. Trying new things and failing or succeeding can open new doors to something better.

Failure is a part of life. While many see failure as a negative thing, I have started to see it as a situation that can make you a better person. Failure drives me to never make that mistake again. I first realized this when I took my first AP class and AP exam and received a score of 2. This journey all started sophomore year when I took AP World History. I quickly learned that I needed to actually read and take notes to be able to succeed in the class. It took a few poor grades on essays and tests for me to understand this. Despite this new revelation, I still struggled in the class. When it came time to start reviewing and preparing for the exam, I put an immense amount of effort, but not as hard as I should’ve been. Exam day came and

The literacy narrative essay, “Proficiency” by Shannon Nichols, is intended for people who suddenly quit after facing setbacks or challenges in their lives. Its purpose is to show people, especially the arrogant people, that failures should humble you. Failures can demoralize us after working so hard to get where we are at. However, failures shouldn't stop you from getting to your goals. Failures should serve as a motivation. I can personally relate to Nichols, because I have failed at something I worked so hard for. Unlike Nichols, I did not quit, or felt discouraged.

Failure is much often a better teacher than success, Failure is practice towards becoming successful if you always succeed you will never know what it feels like to fail and won’t know how to react whenever that time comes. It is everyone’s dream to be successful, but success is very rarely given to anyone.

My past reading and writing experience through my education has taught me an important skill, failure. I have learned to fail with grace, thanks to years of pain and suffering. Failing may be in important skill, but many times it demoralizes and demotes students, and reduces there ability to be lifelong learners. From that failure I have allowed myself to adapt and fit the mold of a cookie cutter student in modern education. Now, you won’t find me willingly pick up a fiction book

In life we all have encountered successes and failures, sooner or later. Although failure is dreadful, I can only learn from it. I have failed multiple times, but I matured and learned from the experience. I, being a teenager, thought a job would make me more efficient; however it was the exact opposite.

It’s not often that people experience real failure. Failure is defined as the “lack of success,” but even unsuccessful attempts can be informative or enlightening. Therefore if you learn something or you’re informed of something you may not have known, that is a successful attempt. Something is only a failure when you admit it is, or you don’t try to succeed at all. Although many would say I’m a failure at the sport of soccer, it is still my favorite sport to play and I have been playing it my whole life. One of my favorite quotes is; “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas A. Edison

The topic of our Honors 120 class this fall was failure. Throughout the semester we read several poems, fiction novels, and nonfiction novels, all which had either a depressed tone or sense of failure. Something else that all of the reading shared was a degree of difficulty to force us readers to encounter some sense of failure.

A negative connotation follows failure like a shadowy figure. Failure, however, is a necessity in order to grow and obtain future success. At seventeen years old, I have had a fairly average rate of failure. I have nothing too outstanding to speak of, of course, but one experience sticks out more than the others as a moment at which my perspective was forced to change and the lessons learned have stuck with me.

The lessons taken from disappointment can be central to our future accomplishments. Failure influences us in a manner that permits us to develop and understand our potential. Failure teaches one in a way books and lectures couldn’t in any way, shape or form. I first experienced failure in the ninth grade after failing to make the cut for both the boys swimming team and boys step team at Archbishop Molloy High School.

I’m struggling to find my niche in writing. I knew writing was my gift years ago, but self-doubt crept in every time I had the urge to write.

Traditionally, failure is seen as a negative concept and is defined as lacking success. I, on the other hand, try to put a positive spin on everything in life. I see failure as an obstacle that is experienced by all, but it does not define an individual. Failure in essence will force an individual to be more receptive to their surroundings and actions and also will force an individual to mature. Looking back on my childhood years I can now pinpoint the areas where I failed and I can confidently say that I have grown and prospered due to those failures. The three major failures I have experienced were my attention deficit issues which affected my ability to succeed in school, my anti-social habit that I let consume my early years, and my