I'm resolving to make lots of mistakes this year
and to take pleasure in doing some things very badly.
One of the most important life lessons came late for me. Perhaps it was actually unlucky, in a way, that I was always good at school, because that meant it was natural for me to gravitate towards doing only those things that came easily to me, where I got good marks and high praise.
I was good at reading and comprehension, as we called it in junior school, so that took me a long way in conventional education. I wrote essays intuitively, without necessarily understanding what made them work, or how to improve them and raise them to the next level. I was getting ‘A’s so there was no incentive. I wasn’t stretched, I didn’t need to make any effort, and so I coasted.
Yet from an early age all I wanted to do was write stories and novels. I wrote a few stories that sort of worked, and more that didn’t. But because of my experience with academic work, instead of carrying on and learning how to make them better, and setting myself the task of learning the craft of writing, I simply gave up. I decided I wasn’t good enough, and that was that.
I don’t know why, but somewhere inside, I think I believed that writing should be as natural and as easy as reading.
Why did all that change, so that now I am writing again, and doing the hardest work I have ever done? How did I come to realise that there are no short cuts, and that it’s not just about talent, it’s about practice?
I really learned this lesson by taking up the textile arts – a skill where, as a left brained academic type, I had no expectation of mastery.
I’d just been diagnosed with lupus, after suffering with unexplained ill health for many years, and I knew that I had to do something creative for its own sake. I remembered, with feelings of deep resentment, not getting my turn on the weaving looms at primary school. So I b0ught a loom.
How did I go about learning to weave?
Of course, I started off as I do with everything. I read voraciously. Before I invested in my first loom – a huge contraption that filled the dining room of our then old Victorian house, I read the Bible of weavers, Peter Collingwood’s book, The Techniques of Rug Weaving. I bought more books, and videos and I worked out how to do the basics. In the first few months, I made curtains and bedcovers, rugs and shawls and blankets.
Then, and this is typical of how I used to be, when I thought I knew a little about what I was doing, I went on a textile arts course.
It never occurred to me I could go on a course to learn something new, I was so afraid of being wrong and not knowing what I was doing, that I would painstakingly teach myself something from a book, that would much faster and easier and better be picked up from an experienced teacher.
Fortunately, I found a very good textiles tutor, who in many ways fixed the basic underlying problem with my approach to learning. Where I had always been rewarded in the past based purely on achievement, she made me feel good about trying new things, making mistakes, and then improving on them.
When it came to time for grading the class, my tutor was very apologetic. She said that of all the students she had ever taught (and this was her retirement year) – I had actually made the most progress. She’d never had a student who was so academic, who had started so far back, who knew nothing about colour and design and was scared of a box of crayons.
If I ever make a writer, it will in large part be due to that textiles tutor, who was the first person ever to give me a fail grade.
So, this year, the more mistakes I make the better. It means I am trying new things, and taking the risks that are fundamental to a creative life.
After all, how will you ever know if you could be any good at something, if you aren’t prepared to be a beginner, to be bad at it? There was a time, I couldn’t even tie my shoelaces…
About Ann GodridgeAnn Godridge has just completed her first crime novel, The Mermaid's Shroud, and has started work on the sequel. Her story the Tree of Knowledge was shortlisted for the Asham Award. She writes about writing and sometimes about textile arts at her blogStraw into Gold. You can find out more about her here - About Ann G.
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20 Responses to I'm resolving to make lots of mistakes this year
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That’s so, so true Ann. Sticking at what we think we’re good at eliminates so many possibilities. The fear of failure is very stifling.
Twitter: evenbreak
That’s so, so true Ann. Sticking at what we think we’re good at eliminates so many possibilities. The fear of failure is very stifling.
Twitter: evenbreak
I was really touched by your story Ann, it is full of lesson for us all. I read somewhere the the single msot commitment we have as human beings is looking good in otherowords we are afraid to fail and that gets in the way of of trying or success!
Twitter: ethnicsupplies
I was really touched by your story Ann, it is full of lesson for us all. I read somewhere the the single msot commitment we have as human beings is looking good in otherowords we are afraid to fail and that gets in the way of of trying or success!
Twitter: ethnicsupplies
It always amazes me at the effect that little things changing at one point, lead to bigger things later on. The textiles tutor changed your life in a way that many teachers would love to do.
It always amazes me at the effect that little things changing at one point, lead to bigger things later on. The textiles tutor changed your life in a way that many teachers would love to do.
She also taught me to do a french knot
Something I found impossible to learn from a book.
I really do think there’s a basic flaw in education, actually, that we are rewarded so much for achievemnt and not for effort. I think it leaves us with the fear of getting things wrong, and of failing, as Jane and Ida say.
There’s this fear of looking stupid that gets in the way, and so many people are left feeling stupid by an education system that values some skills over others. Ryan, for example, is bad at exams and tests – but is exceptionally good at designing systems, and at problem solving.
She also taught me to do a french knot
Something I found impossible to learn from a book.
I really do think there’s a basic flaw in education, actually, that we are rewarded so much for achievemnt and not for effort. I think it leaves us with the fear of getting things wrong, and of failing, as Jane and Ida say.
There’s this fear of looking stupid that gets in the way, and so many people are left feeling stupid by an education system that values some skills over others. Ryan, for example, is bad at exams and tests – but is exceptionally good at designing systems, and at problem solving.
Peter Collingwood… haven’t heard his name for a while. How wonderful.
My weaving teacher was a saint – much more patient than I ever could be!
A business environment which embraces mistakes is a healthy, progressive one.
Twitter: Subutcher
Peter Collingwood… haven’t heard his name for a while. How wonderful.
My weaving teacher was a saint – much more patient than I ever could be!
A business environment which embraces mistakes is a healthy, progressive one.
Twitter: Subutcher
This rings true for me as well. I was good at all sorts of subjects at school, and cruised through to good grades in the first years of university. I scared myself by nearly failing the final year and had to develop some decent study habits.
But it’s only in recent years that I’ve let myself be “bad” at something. In my case it was an improv course, I did it for fun, and found I wasn’t that good at it, but got plenty of laughs at every lesson. Finally it clicked – I might not have to excel at everything.
It’s so obvious – but boy it’s a relief!
Why are those obvious things sometimes so hard for us to see, I wonder?
I’m currently having to remind myself all over again – I’m doing a poetry course and there are so many very good poets in there…and I am definitely bottom of the class.
But after a brief week of panic, I am now relaxing and enjoying it – and learning something.
Improv – now that sounds scary. Perhaps next year…
Thanks Louise
This rings true for me as well. I was good at all sorts of subjects at school, and cruised through to good grades in the first years of university. I scared myself by nearly failing the final year and had to develop some decent study habits.
But it’s only in recent years that I’ve let myself be “bad” at something. In my case it was an improv course, I did it for fun, and found I wasn’t that good at it, but got plenty of laughs at every lesson. Finally it clicked – I might not have to excel at everything.
It’s so obvious – but boy it’s a relief!
Why are those obvious things sometimes so hard for us to see, I wonder?
I’m currently having to remind myself all over again – I’m doing a poetry course and there are so many very good poets in there…and I am definitely bottom of the class.
But after a brief week of panic, I am now relaxing and enjoying it – and learning something.
Improv – now that sounds scary. Perhaps next year…
Thanks Louise
LOL this reminds me of my computing skillz… I can code and used to be a good programmer at university, developing systems and stuff like that yet am totally scared of the innards of WordPress!
Me too, Sal…I try not to look at them too closely
LOL this reminds me of my computing skillz… I can code and used to be a good programmer at university, developing systems and stuff like that yet am totally scared of the innards of WordPress!
Me too, Sal…I try not to look at them too closely
I love this post Ann – fear of failure holds so many of us back – and it’s sad to say that we have such a negative attitude towards so called “failure” here. Trying is what’s important. This post brings to mind that wonderful quote from Edison – on the subject of how many attempts he made before he finally got to his light bulb moment:
“I have not failed 1,000 times. I have
successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.”
I love this post Ann – fear of failure holds so many of us back – and it’s sad to say that we have such a negative attitude towards so called “failure” here. Trying is what’s important. This post brings to mind that wonderful quote from Edison – on the subject of how many attempts he made before he finally got to his light bulb moment:
“I have not failed 1,000 times. I have
successfully discovered 1,000 ways to NOT make a light bulb.”