Nothing is a real failure if you’ve gained experience and learned something from it.

My thirty days of blogs goal crashed and burned before I got to the halfway mark.  Of course, I knew that it wasn’t going to be a habit that I thought I would cultivate beyond the initial thirty days.  Basically, I was starting with a prejudice against it.  And I started the “goal” right in the middle of some intense targets that I was trying to reach: Finish a play draft and submit to a playwriting contest, perform in a play, and write two TV scripts and submit them to for my application to the CFC.

So what did I learn?  One goal at a time and be better prepared.  Although, I rationalized to myself that the thirty days of blogs was a goal and the other activities were different;  I was kidding myself.  Each activity was a separate goal.  At this particular moment, I have another contest that I want to submit to, so that is my current goal.  Once I get that submission completed, I can look towards another goal.

But more importantly, my thirty days of blogs wasn’t a goal I was really committed to completing.  To be honest, I thought it would help me catch up to my “serious” goal of writing a blog a week or having fifty-two blog entries for this year.

And I’ve shied away from adding another entry, because I’m still not quite sure what function this blog has.  Is it just a public journal?  Is it a record of my journey as a writer – not much of a record, so far.  😉  And of course, there’s the weird thing of writing about your life and then finding out that someone has read some of it!  Hai Carumba!

I think the failure of the thirty days of blogs is a representation of some of my other recent failures.  Of not getting some pieces ready for contests or submission deadlines.  It comes down to a lack of preparation and not enough follow through or commitment.

There are enough contests and grants around that I should be planning for them in advance of the deadlines.

If I want to truly move up to the next level as a writer, I need to stop doing things at the last minute.  I’ve got to plan better.  Sometimes the lessons we learn from our failures are not new lessons.  But they’re lessons we have to keep learning until we do the things the lessons are teaching us.

So what will I do with what I learned?  This week, I will make a list of all the deadlines for the contests and grants that I want to apply for in the next twelve months and create a schedule for meeting those deadlines.