What’s This Blog About?
I’ve been a creative person for as long as I can remember.
I wrote my first story at the age of 7. It was called, “The Deer That Skied.” I loved every minute I spent writing that story… and I must have collectively put in at least 24 hours on the project.
Sadly, “The Deer That Skied” was the first of many failures. How did it fail? Well, the assignment was due on a Monday. I wasn’t quite finished with it so I asked my teacher, the round faced, white-haired Mrs. Haskell if I could get an extension. (Although I don’t believe I used the word “extension.” I believe I said, “It’s not done yet!”)
She said I could turn it in next time. So, I happily went home. I continued to work on my epic adventure. By the time “The Deer That Skied” was complete, it was about 12 pages long, hand written in crude 2nd Grade handwriting.
Two weeks had passed. One fine Thursday morning I strutted up to Mrs. Haskell’s desk and handed her my manuscript — fully illustrated. Had she read this astounding work of children’s literature, the following story would have unfolded:
- A Deer named John (John Deer, get it?) finds a pair of skis.
- With the help of his rabbit friend (I must have subconsciously been ripping off Bambi) John puts the skis on, then promptly rolls down the hill in a giant snowball, launching off a huge ski jump ramp.
- A boy named Wade rescues the Deer and convinces the young antelope to keep learning how to ski.
- Then, through a series of misadventures, they make their way to the Winter Olympics. (And if memory serves, the US was boycotting that particular Olympics… so I believe I had to make John a Canadian Deer.)
Long story short — Mrs. Haskell just looked at me and said, “What is this?”
“It’s my story. It’s finished.”
“Well, you’re too late. This was due a long time ago.” And she never read “The Deer That Skied.”
That was my first failure. Well, the story wasn’t a failure to me, personally. I loved writing it. I loved reading it to friends and family. But it was a failure in the sense that I had envisioned my teacher (who was normally quite kind and understanding) — I envisioned that Mrs. Haskell laughing at my story. I pictured her writing positive comments. I pictured one of those cool gold star stickers in the corner next to my name. So, yeah, it counts as a failure.
And you know what, that’s cool. Because Failure can Be Fun! When you fail, that means things don’t go as planned. And that means the unexpected happens. Sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it leads to wonderful opportunities.
This blog will be exploring my Magnificent Failures. I’ve got a lot of them. Some of them deserved to be taken out of the attic, or out of that box in the garage. Some deserve to be re-examined. Some deserve to be laughed at. All of my creative failures, in their own way, have been magnificent.
I hope you’ll join me as this blog explores my many shortcomings. However, I know that you won’t. Why? Because I don’t think anybody is reading this! have a distinct feeling that this blog itself is destined to become yet another one of Wade Bradford’s Magnificent Failures!!!
