So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere second year after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless. The fears my parents have had for me, but I had had for myself, had both come to pass. By every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now I am not going to stand here and tell you that a failure is fun.
That period of my life was a dark one. And I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairytale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended. And for the long time, at the end of the tunnel was a hope, rather than a reality.

So, why do I talk about the benefits of a failure? Simply because failure meant to stripping away of inessential. I stopped pretending myself that I am anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work mattered to me. Had I succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believed I truly belonged. I was set free because my greatest fear has realized and I was still alive and I still had a daughter whom I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so the rock bottom has become a solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. You might not fail on my scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not lived at all. In which case, you failed by default.

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