David Bowie Wrote Some Stinkers (here's why that's a good thing)

The other day, I was helping Russ at ADHD Big Brother (where I'm now a member and have been finding it so helpful) come up with imagery and descriptive language for a new challenge he just launched. This challenge proposes putting the reward for doing something "hard" at the beginning of the task rather than the end. My brain immediately jumped to Ziggy Stardust, to spacemen, to astronauts. Why? Russ also had a hard time with that big leap; I even had to work it out myself.

Photo by Christina Radevich

Champion the Start

In space, there is the vast impossibility of distance between you and any star, any planet. Imagining myself as an alien trying to get home, floating in space, the amount of work to get there would feel insurmountable. But just a slight repositioning, a shift of weight, and there's earth. What was once a mass of towering trees and buildings, gushing waterfalls and honking traffic, brutality and birth, wasteland and abundance — all that once felt overwhelming is now a packaged globe, quiet, contained, distanced. The leaving can feel impossible until it happens, so why not take the moment to turn around and appreciate that big leap. Neil, Buzz, and the rest should be championed not just for their "one small step" on the moon, but also for that first big leap off the planet that got them there.

Stink Your Heart Out

So I took this energy to a meeting for another org I'm helping, Free Cycles. It's our local community bike shop and I'm helping it promote Free Cycles Forever, the organization's Quixotic attempt to raise at least $800,000 by next July to buy their building outright. On the way, I listened to David Bowie and thought, "this freak sure wrote some stinkers" as I skipped a few tracks and landed on the inevitable jams. But no one remembers David Bowie for the stinkers, except with a bit of a smile for those awkward Mick Jagger years. Why don't we picture Bowie or other prolific artists as the flop writers, melody mashers, turd harmonizers they also were? Because they didn't write a bad song and define themselves by it, they continued writing, pushed past the negative press and writer's block that possibly caused the bad songwriting, and didn't step away from the limelit mantle they'd been perched upon.

The Process is Never Linear

I shared the sentiment with Bob Giordano, founder and executive director, as we talked about something more relevant. "We need the stinkers, really," he said, "to frame success. How can we tell what's working when everything is flatly 'great'? Where's the perspective, where's the growth?" I think this is the creativity fountain of youth. Negativity without dispair and without (too much) judgment. This is creation, formation, editing, and discovery all at once. Despair is the death of creativity, but so is complacency.

Photo by Gabriel Bassino

But What Does This Mean for Writers?

Art is about connection, and that includes all writing. Whether you're writing fan fiction, poetry, ad copy, journalism, or web content, there's got to be heart in it, there has to be purpose. If something isn't "successful" it's because it failed to translate into an emotion, or the emotion you hoped for, for the reader. But that doesn't mean you should stop trying to communicate. At its best, a stinker gives you good information on how to make your message heard. Maybe you need more precise language; perhaps you allowed yourself to go on a sidequest in your own story and lost the thread (Psst, I'm teaching a workshop on how to avoid this and still have fun!); or maybe you need to find your target audience.

On my old desk at Adventure Cycling, I had a post-it note that said, "Try being brave maybe." To be brave means to risk the stinkers, to make something as good as you think it can get, put it out there, and see what happens. If people don't love it, shake it off and try again. Get curious, be compassionate with your own work and find out where the disconnect lay. Once you can be brave, be compassionate, and use that information to stay creative, that's where you'll find success as a writer. And still, you'll probably continue to write stinkers as you grow.

My favorite version of another of the best pop songs of the past 60 years

If your blog isn't getting read or your pitches aren't being accepted, find a time on my calendar and we can brainstorm some ways to get you moving in the right direction. Ready to dive right in? The button below will take you to an intake form to take your writing from stinker to Starman.

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