OET (OurEpicTales)

Our Epic Fails!  No, this is not a change in the website’s name or a suggestion for another but a tale about how failures in other aspects of life such as love and career can still lead to success in tale-tailoring and story-telling and plot-weaving (you get my point)!  Do you really think writing a successful story is a one shot endeavor? Do you believe that all the famous writers out there had the “gift” or some inborn trait that made them successful? Do you think you do not have what it takes to make an epic tale?

If you answer yes to any of these questions above, please consider the following:

• Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created the Sherlock Holmes series and other stories beyond law and crime.  He had a troubled childhood (due to his father), was considered a normal young man with a love of sports (aka, nothing stand-out-ish), a bored medical student with a mediocre medical practice later on in life (in one  of his medical offices, he had no patients at all!), but he was an amazing writer who was inspired by his life’s journey. (Original Source: http://www.sherlockholmesonline.org/Biography/index.htm)
• Edgar Rice Burroughs created Tarzan and the series of sci-fi tales about Mars (A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, and The Warlord of Mars).  Throughout Edgar’s life, he was hopping from one school to another (due to worries about epidemics at the time), hopping from one career to another (from his bother’s cattle ranch to his father’s battery factory), but it was his success in writing that enabled him to settle in life. (Original Source: http://www.tarzan.org/official_biography_part1.html)
• William Sydney Porter (or more famously by his pen name, O. Henry) wrote famous short stories such as Rolling Stones and The Gift of the Magi.  But, did you know that he did not take up his pen name until he was sent to prison for embezzlement (after fleeing to Honduras and returning to see his ailing wife… and getting imprisoned)?
• And, for those who think tragic life events are needed for epic-ness, think again!  Charles Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe were inspired, not by a common childhood ailment or unfortunate event but by a raven owned by Dickens (inspired Dickens to write the book Barnaby Rudge and, of course, Poe to write his famous poem about the very same raven).  Dickens loved this raven (named Grip) so much that when Grip passed away, Dickens had him stuffed.  (Original Source: http://www.ushistory.org/oddities/grip.htm)

And, just for inspiration’s sake:

nobody loses all the time (e e cummings)

i had an uncle named
Sol who was a born failure and
nearly everybody said he should have gone
into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could
sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which
may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable
of all to use a highfalootin phrase
luxuries that is or to
wit farming and be
it needlessly
added

my Uncle Sol’s farm
failed because the chickens
ate the vegetables so
my Uncle Sol had a
chicken farm till the
skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol
had a skunk farm but
the skunks caught cold and
died and so
my Uncle Sol imitated the
skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank
but somebody who’d given my Uncle Sol a Victor
Victrola and records while he lived presented to
him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a
scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with
tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and
i remember we all cried like the Missouri
when my Uncle Sol’s coffin lurched because
somebody pressed a button
(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm)

Tags: epic fails, failure before success, failure of writers
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