Writing in a Positive Light

I'm seeing many requests asking how to remain positive in a world that seems to be so depressing. It looks like everything is gloom and doom: the stock market, prices for necessities, wars, babies stuck in holes, natural catastrophes ... all the media reporting negative happenings. It is true that bad news is news. Some writers feel that being surrounded by so much sadness saps their creative energies. Others point to depression as their Writer's Block. The most difficult situation to deal with must be that of a negative individual in your daily life.

One writer, and editor of the Internet Wizards magazine online, Bonnie Boots, offers 7 Steps To Staying Positive In A Negative World. I happen to know that Bonnie has survived some tough stuff in her life, and I am in awe of how she is able to not only carry on, but bounce back running. Some of her tips include:

1. Practice humor
2. Use physical reminders of positives
3. Get away from negativity

Her points for specifically handling a negative person you must deal with (an editor, perhaps?) are truly gems, but I wanted to focus on the third item above. One way to distance yourself from the negative influences in your life is to reduce your exposure to them. When I get my hands on a newspaper, I head straight for the comics section. Customers in my neighborhood Starbucks are familiar with the sound of laughter when I visit.

Tune your radios to stations that play music to either invigorate you or soothe the passions. No talk radio to inflame or lay on downers! When someone begins a rant or a conversation of complaints, don't hesitate to interrupt and jerk (if necessary) the talk back on track or to a pleasant topic. Look into yoga, meditation and other eastern practices to even your outlook. It is true that you become what you fill your mind with, so repeat positive affirmations throughout the day.

Strange as it may sound, using the Twelve Step "attitude of gratitude" can also help banish the blues. Learn to focus on the smallest blessings that surround you. Take compliments with grace and hug them to your heart. Let your mind bathe in the positivity than surrounds you, point it out to others, and as the old song says, "Accentuate the Positive".

Writer's Block Emergency

The terms emergent and emergence are hot in several disciplines (physics, evolution theory, social sciences). From the Encyclopedia Britannica: "In the philosophy of mind, the primary candidates for the status of emergent properties are mental states and events."

The two words are, in my mind, too close to the alarming word emergency, a sudden or unexpected event which connotes danger. Writer's Block can have the aspect of an emergency or it can creep up on the victim. Better to focus on preparing the mind for the condition of emergence, which, according to the Geographical Dictionary is "The creation of new phenomena, requiring new laws and principles, at each level of organization of a complex, and often non-linear, system." Sounds like lateral thinking, huh?

To do this, we can take some cues from The Center for Creative Emergence:

• Everyone is creative and simply need the right conditions to access that infinite well.
• Focused creativity is not separate from the bottom line, but a major factor in contributing to it.
• Next-level innovative solutions require new levels of being as well as thinking.
• Comfort with change increases with consistent practice entering unfamiliar territory in non-habitual ways.
• People can transform their experience of uncertainty from one of fear to one of discovery.
• Creative thinking skyrockets motivation and breeds more relevant - and successful! - contribution.
• With safe cocreating, a group collective intelligence takes over and the “whole exceeds the sum of its parts.”

Try following one or all of these principles as first aid for a Writer's Block and as preventative medicine.

Why Is Writer's Block?

"Creative block — or artist’s block — comes in many different forms, but they all have one thing in common: they stop you from creating what you’re capable of creating and what you long to be creating."

For a general overview of dealing with Writer's Block (temporary disruption in creativity) read Dan Goodwin's article: Creativity Coaching: Creative Block | Why You Don’t Create More. He offers a method for overcoming the negative thoughts he dubs "creative resistance".

Breakout on Writer's Block

The first time I saw the term "breakout sessions" in a conference schedule, I wondered what acne had to do with it, but "breakout" is also associated with imprisonment. Indeed, the first definition listed in the American Heritage Dictionary is "A forceful emergence from a restrictive condition or situation."

Part of that sounds like a good description of a Writer's Block. Remember, WB is only a temporary interruption in creativity, like dammed-up water. Behind the dam is a deep, deep pool of ideas and actions, just waiting to break out. That's what I'm advocating here, "a forceful emergence" from the thinking, routine, slants, topics, maybe even "the rules" you think govern your writing (and your life).

Let's "shake things up" as the FBI agent on Bones urges his forensic team. Do something different, or differently, if that applies. Make it a radical change. Investigate subjects, ways of thinking, physical activities that you've never tried in the past.

For example: until this decade, I knew little about Islam or an existence in which religion is the law of the land. I've learned about a strikingly different way of life through intellectual exploration and friendships with Muslim women. My thinking has changed, several times, about many topics as a result of this new interest. I've read, watched programs, attended art exhibits and talked or emailed with resource people (a.k.a. my new friends).

Bring fresh new activities, topics, and thinking into your life and feel the creativity break out from a Writer's Block.

Writer's Block of Fear

In twelve step programs, participants learn several mantras about fear and courage. For example, courage is just fear that has said its prayers. Courage is being afraid and doing it anyway. My favorite reminds me of junior high school:

Fear is

F alse
E ducation
A ppearing
R eal

Why am I talking about courage and fear in relation to a Writer's Block? Because often the true source of a temporary disruption in creativity is knotted up with one or more fears.

Finding the worm within can take a slow course, such as writing down any dream you have (even a daymare) and analyzing it, but then you risk the paralysis of analysis. In other posts we've already explored the critical voices from childhood whose echoes haunt the chambers of our minds. Contemporary sources promoting veiled fears can include an unsupportive significant other, a too-critical critique group, still living relatives who doubt your potential for success, and friends whose attitudes promote a budding writer's self-doubt.

Of all these undermining attitudes, the one that matters most is your own. Even if you are unaware of the negative messages your psyche is sending your mind to generate fears about writing, YOU ARE STILL IN CONTROL. You can effectively counter the fears by two types of action. Just like the old song says, "Accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative."

Learn to use a list of affirmations about the successful writing career you envision. Fill your outer life with people who give your spirit a boost, understand your goals, and offer support. Yes, you may have to drop out of the family for a while, get new replacement friends, find a different critique group, join a gym, go for counseling if necessary. Just do it!

Thinking Around a Writer's Block

You can look at a Writer's Block as a problem to be solved (rather than only wallowing in the drama and angst of the moment). Edward de Bono suggested that creative people need to incorporate lateral thinking into their repertoire:

We may need to solve problems not by removing the cause but by designing the way forward even if the cause remains in place. Edward de Bono

In an article for The Journal for Quality and Participation (Vol. 11-3), de Bono described types or categories of thinking that you can use to bypass your block:

Metacognitive -- thinking about thinking

Positive -- benefits and workability

Negative -- cautionary judgements

Provocative -- finding changes, alternatives

Informative -- assessing available facts

Intuitive -- unjustified feelings

I've redesignated the kinds of thinking because I find the metaphor of colored hats a weak tool, but feel free to research de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" system for yourself. These kinds of thinking about your Writer's Block can be used in any order or sets. I've presented them here in a series that more or less alternates right-brain, left-brain functions to provide more opportunity to shake up your process and jog you into thinking along a lateral track to success.

Writer's Block and Depression

Much research and writing goes on about creativity and depression. Creativity is the opposite side of Writer's Block. It's the flip side in the recordings of our writing lives. Depression can also be a two-sided coin: an impediment to our work or a catalyst. If you suffer with depression and feel it is holding you back, consider this list of famous writers thought to have had depression:

• Mark Twain
• Charles Dickens
• William Faulkner
• Mary Shelley
• Isak Dinesen

This is from an appendix in Kay Jamison's Touched With Fire; Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. According to Amazon, "Jamison marshals a tremendous amount of evidence for the proposition that most artistic geniuses were (and are) manic depressives."

The good new is that depression is sometimes only temporary, and it is treatable and manageable when a chronic condition. (And we don't all need to be geniuses or crazy to be creative.) Still, depression can sometime hamper our production. It makes us dull, slothful and fosters the "I don't give a damn about anything" attitude. This can also translate for writers into, "I can't think of anything to write" or simply, "I'm stuck!"

When writers fall prey to a of lack of creativity, it can result from or lead to a depressive cycle of I can't write -- My writing is no good -- I'm no good -- I don't deserve to be a writer -- I can't write. Break out! Whether with self-help methods like affirmations, with counseling or with a course of antidepressant medication (or any combination), taking action can be one of the most powerful antidotes to depression that we have in our survival tool kit.

The truth is that you are fine just as you are. Don't use a permanent solution (like giving up) for a temporary problem.

Balancing Writer's Block

Writing is like crossing the Grand Canyon on a tightrope. Sounds impossible, yes? You know where to start, firmly anchored with an idea. And you know the end, a polished, finished piece. In the center is a yawning chasm one mile deep with sharp rocks and a raging river at the bottom. This looks like an endeavor fraught with danger. But all you really must do to succeed is put one foot in front of the other without losing your balance. Start and finish. Simple.

Most of us are blessed with the ability to walk, or we have some means of moving, even if only in our minds, so that leaves balancing, the tricky part. I'll leave the tightrope metaphor here, because I have no experience in that area, and anyway I don't want to beat it to death. I'm sure you get the picture by now. Balance is an important element in becoming and remaining a successful writer.

Several different kinds of balancing support creativity:

• physical
• emotional
• intellectual

These are my top three. Losing balance in any of them can block progress.

PHYSICAL

Although "just sit and write" is often hurled at beginners as the cure for Writer's Block, spending too much time sitting at the computer or curled up with your notebook can work against you. Muscles stiffen, eyes burn, the brain drains. The writing part of your life, like everything else it seems, needs physical exercise and variations. Neglect to move around and you may have more than one type of constipation!

EMOTIONAL

It's good to be emotionally invested in your writing. That's part of being committed, and your enthusiasm affects the writing. Too much investment, however, elicits irrational fear of rejection and fosters the myth of the "lonely writer". Keep building connections with other people in your life, spend time with your family and work on improving any troublesome relationships. We writers need the emotional support of others, and sometimes we need to ask for it in plain terms. Fall in love with writing and life, not your characters.

INTELLECTUAL

A novel can easily take over a writer's mind. I used to hear my characters having conversations when I was not at the keyboard. Spooky! The brain needs a break from writing activities, too. Depending on whether you are creating fiction or nonfiction work, the "other" side of the mind can benefit from stimulation from different creative arts or left brain challenging activities like working Sudoku puzzles, preparing tax forms, and home fix-it repairs.

Keeping your life in balance is a good preventative measure for warding off Writer's Blocks, as well as potential cures. Good for the writer in any case, good for those around you, and good for life in general. Take a cue from Mother Nature: balance is everything.

Women's Day, History Month

Saturday, March 8th, is International Women’s Day and all of March celebrates women in history. The 2008 National Women's History Project has a focus on women in the arts. One of my most enjoyable re-creational experiences was discovering the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC, where I purchased their lovely eponymous book, published by Harry N. Abrams in 1987 and apparently out of print now. Viewing and celebrating sister artists' creations is one method of renewing your well of creativity.

Writing Through Writer's Block

Avoiding the empty page. Staring at the blank screen. Puzzled at a pause. Stopped at the end of a sentence. You've come to the start of a Writer's Block. Nothing is coming. "I have no more to write," -- or so you think. Right here, right now, on the same page, begin a new section and write about this temporary interruption in creativity. *

• How or where did it start?
• What does the block feel like?
• How do you feel about yourself?
• What were your plans?
• What do you need to continue?

When you've exhausted these and any other issues you can think up about your block, cut and paste this section into a new document (if you're working on a computer) and "play" with it. Shape it up into an article, a blog post, a journal entry. Turning it into a salable article might include listing methods to prevent or overcome this particular form of Writer's Block. Maybe you will need to do a little research, digging up references.

At any rate, you will have been writing. Not blocked at all. In the process, you will gain insight into your feelings and thoughts, perhaps about the original piece, perhaps about yourself as a creative producer, and perhaps about writing itself.

* reframing the problem can help overcome it

Squeeze Copyright to Stifle Creativity

The Harry Potter brouhaha playing out in British courts threatens the "fair use" provision of copyright law, or so says New York Times business columnist, Joe Nocera, in A Tight Grip Can Choke Creativity. In a tight nutshell, the case involves a website publisher who announced he was about to present a companion book (long a standard practice in the fiction world) for profit. The problem? The product for sale was to be a portion of the Harry Potter Lexicon, also very much for the profit of the publisher. Nocera claims the "fair use" portion of copyright law, "allows anyone to create something new based on someone else’s art."

Perhaps J. K. Rowling and the handlers of her empire don't think an encyclopedia of Harry Potter terminology is something new. After all, it was Rowling who created the Harry Potter world and everything therein. Nocera implies Rowling is suing because no one asked her permission (read: paid for a license or franchise) to produce this new book.


Really, how creative is it to list words and their uses in someone else's novel? Sounds more like a specialized form of editing to me, like indexing or preparing a glossary for a manuscript. Not exactly original work. Certainly nothing new. The information in the website itself comes from established sources.

I realize I'm arguing against my own forté, nonfiction. But I'm thinking like a fiction writer of a successful enterprise, wanting to keep creative control, as they say in the movie biz.

Learning to Write from John Baker

British author John Baker wrote a series of 31 articles about learning creative writing in his blog. They began in June 2006 with Learning to Write I - John Baker’s Blog. At the end of that first piece are links to the other 30 articles, ending with one in June 2007. You don't absolutely need to read them in order, and I wouldn't dare to reproduce each tidbit here, but this is a handy list of the links to all the juicy parts:

Table of contents for Learning To Write from John Baker's Blog

1. Learning to Write I
2. Learning to Write II
3. Learning to Write III
4. Learning to Write IV
5. Learning to Write V
6. Learning to Write VI
7. Learning to Write VII
8. Learning to Write VIII
9. Learning to Write IX
10. Learning to Write X
11. Learning to Write XI
12. Learning to Write XII
13. Learning to Write XIII
14. Learning to Write XIV
15. Learning to Write XV
16. Learning to Write XVI
17. Learning to Write XVII
18. Learning to Write XVIII
19. Learning to Write XIX
20. Learning to Write XX
21. Learning to Write XXI
22. Learning to Write XXII
23. Learning to Write XXIII
24. Learning to Write XXIV
25. Learning to Write XXV
26. Learning to Write XXVI
27. Learning to Write XXVII
28. Learning to Write XXVIII
29. Learning to Write XXIX
30. Learning to Write XXX
31. Learning to Write XXXI

Blank Page Writer's Block

You've been chugging along, cranking out, well, whatever it is that you do involving words strung together, probably for profit. Maybe you've been at it for a few weeks or even quite a few years with successes spurring you on. Perhaps you've never even experienced a "temporary creativity interruption" in your life. You start a new project and POW! [comic book eruption]. Nothing happens. Usually writing happens, but this time you sit there and stare at the blank page.

Now, all the naysayers who deny Writer's Block even exists will tell you to apply seat of pants to seat of chair and write. To stop being lazy and looking for excuses. Just do it. Blah, blah, blah. It's all baaaaad advice because you have been producing, you did show up, you are perspiring (by now, it's possibly from panic.) And most of all, you have been doing it. You're obviously not lazy and you weren't looking for an excuse not to write, or you wouldn't have shown up atthe appointed time and place all ready to go AS USUAL. Your expectation was that things would go on the same as always, but this is a different experience and calls for a different tactics.

Many other advisers (myself included, at times) will suggest that you take a break, maybe visit museums, cross-pollinate with other arts, take a walk or even take a few days off from writing. These quick fixes work when the writer discovers she doesn't know enough about medieval basket weaving or he is stressed out by the new twins. IF you can analyze your state and determine no lack of knowledge or planning is holding you up and no emotional or psychological cause has plugged up your font of creativity, THEN I have a radical suggestion:

Put writing on a hiatus. Take a sabbatical. Make it a real vacation from this type of work, but don't throw it out of your life, just ease your pot of now simmering creative juice to one of the back burners. If you need immediate income, take a temporary job (at its worst, you'll be exposed to new characters, dialog and plot ideas). And that's what you can always tell busybodies who snoop into your business -- "I'm doing research for a new article/book/website."

While your mind is relatively empty, it's time to recharge the batteries of your senses. Notice the fragrances, colors, sounds, tastes and touches all around you. Focus on one sense at a time, then the zeitgeist, near and far. Be good to yourself, indulge and play, maybe even revisit childhood activities. Try something new and expand your horizons. And do it all as long as you need to. You're opening a door and who knows what will stroll in? Maybe your missing muse, or maybe a whole new life.

Can Your Book Heal the World?

It is true that much of my advice about writing and getting published is practical, intellectual and market-oriented. In the interest of providing a balance, I direct your attention to Naomi Rose's recent article at the Creativity Portal. In Your Book Can Heal the World: Looking in the Mirror of Our True Nature, she makes a good case for authenticity in writing, despite the industry's apparent fixations on what she calls the 3 P's of "Promotion, Profitability, and Platform."

The healing aspect comes in when you bring your deeper Self into the telling. And you do this by:
1. learning how to listen to what’s inside your heart,
2. trusting its (often initially nonverbal) ways of making its message known to you, and
3. learning how to translate that inner sensing into written language that
* carries out the deeper Self’s intention, and also
* naturally rises into metaphor and poetry

Writers Tackle TMIS

Right now my "To Do" list reads:

Write a memoir
Resume watercolor painting
Redesign A Writer's Edge website
Start a book on cooking
Secure a paid blogging gig
Sell excess junk in house
Advertise for more editing jobs
Edit or create a new blog on cooking

Abmitious? Yes. Ridiculous? Yes! I printed the list in large text and taped it to the front of my printer where it is in view every time I sit to compute. Result: I futz around going from one project to another, accomplishing little. It's too much to do to reach ta daa!

That's why I was delighted to find Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant's article on Creativity: Overcoming Too Many Ideas Syndrome. Skip the lengthy introduction and ignore the cutsy subtitles and you'll find nine suggestions for coping with TMIS, including to talk about the ideas with other writers, use mental imagery to manage the mess and evaluate all the ideas to find the best one on which to focus. Some of the notions she recommends are conflicting, so it's up to you to find what works best in your situation. This could be a goal for your new year: get your ideas organized.

Bust the Writer's Block

From Courage and Craft: Writing Your Life into Story by Barbara Abercrombie:

To live your own true and precious life, you need to express yourself and make your inner life as important and known as your visible life. Whether you’re published or not, you need to turn the chaos and the glimpses of beauty, the questions and the search for answers, the days and months and years of your life into something meaningful on a page.

Sometimes all those bits and pieces glom together to build up a creative block. Just too much information, too many experiences, feelings, people, relationships overload our writing circuits and plug up the flow.

The good news is that out of this chaos, you can choose to own the mess and design an orderly arrangement that allows creative construction. Busting the block is deconstruction, selecting the elements on which to focus. Incorporate and discard features as you experiment with a piece of writing. If it isn't working--fix it. Don't fear experimentation. No one will penalize you for overproduction and flops. We'd never see Broadway successes if playwrights and producers didn't take repeated risks.

Each day, as you age, fragments of life add to your store of ideas, memories, experiences on which to draw. If you're the type to compartmentalize and pigeon-hole this material, you have a tidy, orderly inner castle. The downside is a tendency to rigidity that needs occasional messing up in order to play the "what if ... " game which nurtures imagination and creativity. At the other end of the continuum, if you can simply absorb what life tosses your way and let it pile up inside, a little housecleaning and organization can help you find the order necessary to make sense and make art.

Think Outside the Writer's Block Box

Let's face it: when you're suffering with Writer's Block, you're in a box. You might feel like there's no way out, not a ray of light, and you're suffocating. The good news is that you've probably built that box or placed yourself in it. Blocks are usually constructed within your own mind. Do you really have to be there? Can you change the material, bend the bars, open a window?

This reminds me of my early art experiences with big, fat waxy crayons and printed books of images I was expected to fill in with colors. If the print had been more faint, the cute kittens and puppies would have disappeared into the background, because I was unable to STAY INSIDE THE LINES! I was more interested in what might be happening in the background, because I knew puppies and kitties didn't just hang in featureless space. Coloring outside the lines is thinking outside the box.

One of the best examples I know about writing is the recent development of memoir writing. Prior to the late 1980s, life story writers were constrained by the limitations of autobiography or personal essay. Then some brave souls broke out of those box/blocks to run free with tense and voice and time, mingling then and now, the person I was with the person I am, the tale with the teller. Thinking outside that traditional box was coloring outside the lines, making for a richer, layered, more colorful creation.

Participate in Writing

You can interpret this title in several equally applicable ways. One was demonstrated on Oct. 15 with the Blog Action Day post. Another is way is simply to participate in writing, by writing. The act of writing can be therapeutic to the self and/or beneficial to others. The type of participatory writing I have in mind, however, happens when the writer takes part in the subject/event/topic being written about. This could get a little dicey for murder and horror writers, so don't get carried away like the Mexican Arrested in Dismemberment Case.

When I was writing a novel with occult elements, in addition to research, I performed some of the tamer rituals with benign intent. Summoning up feelings a character might experience enabled me to write more effectively. Similarly for articles I've gone to sea with treasure divers and on a mercy mission with the Coast Guard, meditated walking on a path Franciscan friars traveled before the this country existed, eaten rattlesnake and wild foods, watched a recovery of drowning victims' bodies, and had many other experiences most people don't ordinarily take part in.

The saddest example was writing the obituary for a friend. I like to think that event is balanced by my documentation of the joyful natural birth of my first child. Women can totally participate! As long as it injures no one or you understand any risks you might be taking, I encourage you to get out and experience in person, in reality. Your writing will take on more vivid hues and a depth not possible otherwise.

Creative Escapism for Writers

As you may know, I regularly take breaks from writing and expose myself to other forms of expression. I hope for a "cross pollination of creativity". Touring an art exhibit almost always gives me ideas to follow up in my own media. Creativity coach Eric Maisel offers advice about Taking a Creative Escape. He urges breaking out of your rut every two weeks with activities like these:

Find running water--a river, a stream, a burbling public fountain--and sketch there; or just daydream.

Go to a bookstore, pull out all the books on Paris, take them to a table in the bookstore cafe, and visit Paris for three hours over coffee and an almond biscotti.

Set up a casual informational interview with someone whose work or profession interests you

Text with Pictures

A ramble through the art museums this week reminded me of an urge I experienced at one time to create a series of paintings with accompanying text. I don't recall if the picture was to illustrate the text or the text to explain the picture. Either way, this notion now feels to me fundamentally wrong. I'm thinking that if a picture needs a verbal description to be understood, then the artist has failed, but it doesn't seem so much that the reverse is true. Why is this? An illustration can illuminate, deepen, clarify. Does this mean the writer has failed? Maybe. When an artist takes inspiration from text, though, is it reasonable to expect the resulting art to be a "readable" message all by itself ... or, if you will, just pleasing to view without needing to know the passage that prompted it? Am I a victim of my own fuzzy thinking?

Habits to Prevent Writer's Block

Not to become obsessive/compulsive, but developing little rituals or habits surrounding starting to write can help prevent, and possibly overcome, the kind of Writer's Block in which you sit down to write and nothing comes. In fact, this very type of block can be considered a habit--a bad one. Fortunately, from self-help psychology we've learned that it takes three weeks to develop a bad habit and three weeks to unlearn it by substituting a good one.

What kind of habit to develop? It doesn't really matter, as long as you practice it consistently, every time you attempt to write. Some people like to light candles or incense, play certain music, clean and arrange a desktop, assure an ergonomically correct posture, even to blog as a way of priming the pump, so to speak. For others the simple procedures of starting their computers, opening a word processing program and finding or setting up the right file can do the trick.

When I write by hand, I MUST have a certain kind of ink pen (black Uni-ball Micropoint, if you're interested), unless I'm writing poetry. Then I need a sharp pencil, with or without a functioning eraser. And I prefer being curled up on my couch with a full-size composition-style notebook. And lots of tea to drink. It's as if these signals tell my mind, "O.K., you're ready to write creatively."

This procedure of developing a set of habits to foster writing works best if first attempted when you aren't suffering from a block. Otherwise, you risk associating them with failure. Start with several elements. When you feel them firmly in place, you can begin to reducing the number gradually, one at a time, until maybe you need only one activity or object to induce the desired result.

Newspapers' Failures Online

Pity the poor papers! With more people than ever claiming to receive their daily news via the Internet, is it any wonder the papers have gone online and experimented with every available electronic gimmick? Some are successful, although the last bastions of subscription-only services are falling soon with the NY Times and Wall Street Journal opening up. For an online look at online flops by papers, read this special article at the Editor and Publisher website.

I like the attitude shown by one paper's editor:

Still, veteran Web spinners such as Jim Brady, washingtonpost.com's executive editor, understand the need for online operators to hit some snags and stumbles if they truly want to succeed. "Failure isn't to be feared on the Web, it is to be embraced," he says. "If you are not failing, you are not stretching as much."

It's a good example for today's celebration of Positive Thinking Day!