Instead of jettisoning a mistake, what if we let it become something useful? Beth Vogt challenges us.
Elisa
Beautiful Failures
By Beth K. Vogt
My daughter Amy has been failing lately. Her attempts and failures are beautiful to watch.
Let me explain.
A few months ago, Amy fulfilled a long-awaited goal and took her first pottery class. She’s a natural — and that’s not just a mama-bias boast. Amy has real skill with clay and wheel. Even better, she enjoys the artistic process — the forming and trimming and glazing. All the steps involved. Each week at the end of class, her clothes are splattered with clay, her face is covered with a huge smile.
Those failures I mentioned earlier? Amy embraces them. It seems she almost chases after them as she explores the “what if I did this?” pathways of creativity. Her smile doesn’t dim when things literally go wonky on her pottery wheel.
Sometimes she adapts an oops into a new creation. Other times, the chunk of clay ends up in the waste bin. Lesson learned as she moves on to something new.
The other day, Amy showed me a finished project. She explained the odd-shaped, multicolored bowl wasn’t close to what she’d imagined it would be. She’d tried to salvage an oops, but the shape and color in no way matched her original thought process.
“What are you going to do with it?” I asked.
When she mimed tossing it in the trash, I plucked it from her hands. Absolutely not.
Amy doesn’t understand how her courageous creativity in the face of failure has encouraged me. As an author, I’ve learned failures are part of life. Sometimes writing is a fun dance of creativity. Sometimes writing is a slog. (Slog seems to be the theme this year.) Watching my daughter choose to embrace her mistakes and turn them into something positive, something fun, has challenged me to do the same.
Amy’s bit of pottery disappointment now sits by my computer. I drop my glasses into it because, well, I’m always misplacing them. But mostly, her beautiful failure has changed my mindset. When I’m disappointed with my writing efforts, instead of thinking, “I made such a mess of this,” I’m reminded to ask myself, “what can I do with this now?” It’s just an oops. Thanks to my daughter Amy, I’ve learned I can take a breath and have some fun with it.
Beth K. Vogt believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “Never.” She has authored more than a dozen novels and novellas, both romance and women’s fiction. Her most recent release is Dedicated to the One I Love. Beth is a Christy Award winner, an ACFW Carol Award winner, and a RITA® finalist. Her novel Things I Never Told You, book one in her Thatcher Sisters Series by Tyndale House Publishers, won the 2019 AWSA Golden Scroll Award for Contemporary Novel of the Year. An established magazine writer and former editor of the leadership magazine for MOPS International (now called The MomCo), Beth blogs for Learn How to Write a Novel and The Write Conversation and also enjoys speaking to writers’ groups and mentoring other writers. She lives in Colorado with her husband, Rob, who has adjusted to discussing the lives of imaginary people. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com.
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