Sometimes, I just can’t take another minute of bad news. Fortunately, today was not one of those days. Today I read the newspaper.

And thank goodness, grasshopper, or I would have missed a nice little story on Page one of the Gwinnett Daily Post about a young man named Deep.

Young Deep was speaking at his former high school about what looks to all like a whole bunch of academic success that he’s enjoyed. But, Deep pointed out, there were quite a few failures along the way, too. It’s just that when we see highly successful folk, we don’t think about all the heartache and failure endured to get there. It’s the old Thomas Edison and the light bulb story, I guess. We see the single light and not the days of darkness Edison struggled through.

But here’s what Deep and Edison didn’t do: they didn’t quit. So, if you want to be a successful writer, grasshopper, you’re going to have to accept the failure it takes to get there.

Some of us have to accept a lot more failure than others. But you know what old Emily Dickinson had to say about that: Success is counted sweetest by those who n’er succeed. (Wait a minute-n’er succeed? How about “Success is counted sweetest by those who work really, really hard and screw up a lot but eventually succeed”? Yeah, that sounds a lot better.)

Almost forgot! You have one more day to zip over to Finders and Keepers and post a comment for a chance to win Rachel Dillon’s beautiful picture book!