On Failure and Forgiveness: Commentary on “The Question”

At Michigan State University, I teach a course titled Writing as Exploration. One of the main goals of this course is to help students practice revision. Over the course of the semester, my students produce several drafts of their essays in response to comments and feedback from their classmates and their instructor. Every week, I meet with students during my office hours about yet another draft of their essays; most students are certain that when I read over their latest draft, I will tell them that it is perfect and does not need any more work. Usually, though, I hand their work back to them with another list of revisions. As we talk, I notice a flutter of fear and uncertainty take hold. I can tell it’s there because of the way they shift uncomfortably in their seats or the way in which their eyes widen with panic at the idea of another round of revisions. I can discern this sense of fear and panic because I have felt it myself many times; it usually comes on when I realize that a piece of writing is not yet finished, that no matter how finished it may look at the present moment, I will have to revisit it eventually and take it apart one more time. As I sit across from my students and try to calm them down, I usually say “It will be okay” over and over again. I say it out loud like a sacred chant, repeating the words until they stop meaning anything at all.

On my worst writing days, I stare at my computer from morning till night, hoping words will pour out of my fingers and find their way to the screen. I know this is not the best way to write; I know I should probably go read something else or scribble in my journal for a bit. I also know that there are days when writing is an impossible task. On those days, I tell myself I should be content with the few sentences or paragraphs I have managed to eke out over the course of a few hours. And yet, my writerly self is stubborn; she likes to stay home, unwashed, in her pajamas, holding on to the possibility that a perfect piece of writing will eventually emerge from her busy fingers. She finds it hard to accept the possibility of failure, the possibility that things might not always work out the way she wants them to. She can never imagine that everything will be okay, because she is alone in a world where there are no rules, only the imperative to keep working and to keep writing. If I give in to her demands, I know I will never go anywhere or get anything done. I have learned to willfully dissociate from my writerly self for brief periods of time, so that my other selves—the teacher, the student, the girlfriend, the daughter—can thrive.

When I tell my students “It will be okay,” I don’t say it with a firm sense of conviction. Instead, those words emerge from a place of hope, a place I often forget to visit because my writerly self is so unforgiving. And yet, I know if I don’t learn to forgive myself, I might not write at all. Writing “The Question” offered me many lessons in forgiveness: the essay’s “incompleteness,” its lack of resolution, bothered me for a long time. A journal editor once wrote to tell me that while she thought the piece had potential, it felt incomplete. In my very first draft, the essay ended with the narrator asking the question that was on her mind. A few early readers were not happy with this conclusion and asked me to take out the question entirely. They asked me to focus instead on the dynamics of posing the question. Other readers have told me that not knowing the question made the essay a frustrating read. I may have been able to build in more hints about the question itself had I lengthened the essay. But I...