I saw this amazing clip from Paul McCartney about the song Blackbird, one of my all time favorites.
Did you catch what he said? He and John, while messing around with Bach and got some of the song wrong because they didn’t know the scond half.. That bit of “wrong” highlighted the chords he was truly interested in that became the basis for one of their most popular songs.
A mistake led to something new. Something great.
He could have, once he learned of his mistake, felt embarrassed he’d gotten it wrong and dedicated himself to learning the correct second half.
He didn’t.
He ran with it. He let what he liked inspire him.
I want to tell you a secret, which is probably no secret if you’ve been around these parts for any length of time, there have been lots of times when I wouldn’t have probably handled that in the same way.
I would have beat myself up for getting something wrong. The shame might have kept me from actually exploring the new thing knowing it was based on a wrong thing.
Mistakes are opportunities. Many inventions were the result of a different invention attempt.
Take the Post-it note.
A 3M employee was tasked with creating an adhesive for the aerospace industry. All his attempts were too easily removable. Many years later, when a colleague needed something to mark his place in his Sunday hymnal he remembered this “failed” adhesive and tried it–boom! The Post-it was born. Technically, the original invention was a failure, but the Post-it note is anything but.
So what’s my point?
It can be really tempting to judge our own writing by how long it takes us or how many revision passes we need.
Stop.
It takes what it takes. We need to fail in order to create. Reaching for great and coming up short is how we know to keep working, to get creative, to innovate, to try new things.
No one, and I mean no one, writes a book or a poem or a short story or a paragraph perfectly on the first try. There is always something to improve, to enhance, to cut, to experiment with.
Don’t self-censor before you even begin. Go in looking to make mistakes, to fail. Because only then can you learn and grow.
Go write and make mistakes with abandon.
Because you never know where they might lead you next.
It may be somewhere great.
And enjoy this beautiful cover of Blackbird from Joy Oladukun:
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