Designing Failure Out of the Process
Most advice about creativity revolves around courage.
Permission.
Risk-taking.
Learning to tolerate failure.
I don’t think that’s quite right.
In my experience, the more useful move is to
design failure out of the process entirely.
When I’m working - with collage, writing, or something as improbable as a fictional company that sells holes - I’m not trying to succeed or fail. I’m not proving anything. I’m not auditioning ideas for approval. I’m just showing up and entering a conversation.
I make a move.
The work responds.
I notice what happened.
If something doesn’t “work,” nothing has gone wrong. I’ve simply learned something. The material answered in a particular way. The idea revealed a boundary. Language pushed back. That’s not failure. That’s feedback.
Failure only exists when there’s an outcome you’re attached to. Once you remove the outcome, the stakes dissolve. What’s left is playful attention.
Collage teaches this very quickly. You don’t start with a masterpiece in mind. You start with fragments. You place things together and see what they do to each other. Most combinations go nowhere. Some quietly open doors. The point isn’t to judge - it’s to notice.
Masterpiece-thinking is what freezes a lot of artists. It installs judgment too early. It turns curiosity into performance anxiety. It converts a living inquiry into a test.
When failure is designed out of the system, experimentation becomes light. Play becomes serious without becoming heavy. Work becomes a way of listening.
You don’t need permission to fail.
You need a process, an approach, where failure doesn’t apply.
so well put
Good timing article for me. I recently finished my 180th art piece and have nothing to start. I've putzed around the studio playing with some items but nothing has sparked and idea or even inspiration for a new piece to be created. But your article has paralleled what I've been thinking about and that's just to play around, not to think about a masterpiece or about failure, not worry about anyone seeing these assemblage "doodles" and just go in there and keep putzing and playing and doing whatever.