Insights: The Importance of Creative Failure

Lessons learned from a lifetime of making things with varying degrees of success.

Me looking pensive in a chair in a field in Lahinch a few years back. Photo: Tozer

I’ve been trying to make things, with extremely varying degrees of success, since I was about 14 years-old.

Over the intervening years, I’ve never stopped. I’ve written countless articles for newspapers, magazines and websites; made zines; authored or co-authored about 6 books; written film scripts; created and pitched TV shows (none of which got off the ground); played hundreds of gigs and made two records with various musical projects; made websites; created and run at least two businesses; conceptualised and run probably hundreds of marketing campaigns; made a podcast documentary series. (There are probably more things that I can’t remember).

Objectively, almost all of these undertakings have been creative ‘failures’ - at least in the commercial sense.

And yet, taken individually and as a whole, they’ve been of immense value: whether as experiences in their own right, for what I’ve learned, or for where they’ve led.

I’m currently two-thirds of the way through yet another big old creative project. And over the months, I’ve perhaps inevitably been thinking about creative failure.

It got me wondering - what lessons have I gleaned from all those other creative ‘failures’ over the years? That’s what you’re about to read.