John Green: The Freedom of Failure

If you have ever created anything, you probably did not get it right on the first try. Unfortunately, humans are not machines who always act according to their inputs. Humans are messy and often fail. For many creatives, this failure can be overwhelming or upsetting. However, John Green, a well-known young adult author, is open about his relationship with failure, mainly because he does not let the fear of failure prevent him from writing.

Many people know John Green from his masterful works like The Fault in Our Stars, Looking For Alaska, and Turtles All the Way Down. His first novel, Looking For Alaska, was published in 2005. Since its publication, John Green has been a household name in the world of young adult novels. However, even for a globally known author like John Green, it can be challenging to start writing and know that the first or even the first six drafts will not be good enough to publish. What does John Green’s writing process teach us about creativity and what it means to be human?

John Green, seen here with many of his novels

“The ideas for my books come from lowercase-i ideas”

When asked how he comes up with ideas for his novels, Green explains that he has never had an idea come to him all at once, what he calls a capital-I Idea. Instead, Green’s creative process mirrors many other creatives because he creates using the Geneplore Model. The Geneplor Model was a model of the creative process developed by Finke, Ward, and Smith. This model shows the connection between divergent and convergent thinking. Green’s process starts with a lowercase-i idea. In his own words, Green explains, “Little ideas will come along and link up to other little ideas, then in a few short years, I have a book.” These little ideas are examples of the generation of pre-inventive structures or divergent thinking. These are ideas that act as starting points for Green when he writes. Then, Green researches these ideas as much as he can. When writing The Fault in Our Stars, a novel that centers around teenagers who had cancer, Green interviewed many cancer survivors and their families to better understand and write believable characters. This is an example of preinventive exploration and interpretation, or convergent thinking.

Green’s process of combining smaller ideas and research into a book exemplifies the collecting thinking style. This thinking style occurs when someone combines inputs from many different sources and uses them to solve a problem or create something new. For Green, this collection includes research, editing, and talking to people in his life, including his editor and his wife. Green even explained that many of the most famous lines from his novels are from his wife. Even if they may have been discussing something entirely unrelated to his current novel, this ability to relate external factors to his creative works makes Green an exceptional writer and creative.

 

"It doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day
I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will
stick in the minds of my readers forever, because
there’s a 90% chance I’m just gonna delete whatever
I write anyway." 

“I just give myself permission to suck”

When asked how to deal with writer’s block, Green explained that he does not get caught up with failing because he usually deletes about 90% of his first drafts. Failing often holds people back, especially when they are afraid to fail. However, failing is a natural, important part of being human. In the book The Creative Spark by Agustin Fuentes, Fuentes writes about how vital failing was for human evolution and why it is a problem that society today sees failing as unfavorable or something to avoid. In the chapter “The Beat of your Creative Life,” Fuentes writes about how ancient humans did not learn to communicate or create tools on their first try. It took humans thousands of years to create a society, tools, ways to avoid predators, and create art. Historians agree that without failure, we would not be where we are today.

If progress is impossible without failure, why do we fear failure so much? Fuentes explains that many societies see failure as a flaw or weakness. People are afraid to fail because they do not want to be seen as a failure themselves. For many cultures, failing at art is seen as even worse because art is often associated with frivolity. For centuries, art has been restricted to people with the money and time to create and enjoy art. Although art is more accessible today, both to create and enjoy, this association between art and frivolity is seen repeatedly. For example, think of the response that someone gets when they say they are going to college for writing, visual arts, or creative arts compared to the response when someone is going to college for a science or math degree. This idea that art is not a practical use of time and skill makes the response to failure when attempting art much more critical.

Society should take John Green’s advice and be open to failing. When we fail, rather than being disappointed, we should learn from that failure and create something better. Although this philosophy is easier said than done, it can be easy to start failing. I am afraid to fail. Throughout my life, I have tried to be the best I can be at school and take great pride in my grades. I have never let myself fail, especially in school. However, I have recently been looking for places outside of school where I can let myself fail. There is a partially started puzzle in my room that I haven’t gone back to in weeks. There is a shrine in Zelda that I have rage-quit twice because I cannot defeat it. These are not significant failures, but maybe by letting myself accept and grow from the small failures, I can create new things when facing larger failures. This week, I aim to find a new way to learn from failure and finally finish the border of that puzzle. 

For more information about John Green and to see the quotes I used for this article, please follow this link