What do you do when something goes wrong, really wrong, with your career? What happens if it’s your fault? What about if it’s someone else’s fault?
Mary leads by talking about the Glamour in Glass misprint — the first line was omitted in the hardback — and the difference between her private and public reactions to the issue. She likens this to similar sorts of situations that might happen on stage in live theater, and how those teams are expected to behave.
Dan tells us about the issue in I Am Not a Serial Killer, which gave some readers fits because it was edited in such a way that readers didn’t know there were supernatural elements in the story until chapter 10.
From these and other experiences, we extrapolate some behaviors you can use, and some things to steer clear of.
via Writing Excuses 8.37: When Fail Happens in Your Career » Writing Excuses.
As someone that went through a few years of college theater, recovering from a fail on stage is something dear to my heart. I’ve had many times seen (or did) cover-ups that the audience wouldn’t be aware of. And we’ve also acknowledged obvious mistakes and come up with explanations that the audience ended up loving and remembering.
It reminded me of this video of Laura Bell Bundy doing this big song in Legally Blonde right before intermission.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-p5Pl5IQEE
At the 3:55 mark, you can see her kick her right shoe. She kept going, and tossed away her left shoe as well. The audience gave her a big cheer. And at the end of the song, since she was no longer wearing high heels, she decided to do a jump into the air that’s a lot bigger than the regular one. The audience loved it and gave her another big round of applause.
I couldn’t think of an example off the top of my head, but I am sure there have been many public figures who had a fail, and then handled it well. And it became part of their narrative afterwards. Some people are better at handling fails with class than others.
That’s an excellent example.
That’s a great story, and I agree. Mistakes, failure–learning–all happen, and we can decide how to respond to those.
Also somehow wasn’t familiar with the Writing Excuses podcast, so all around good and useful stuff. Thank you. 🙂