Failure is relative.

For my friend Brandon, I was looking for quotes on the role of failure in creative work.

First, I found this definition in the dictionary:

Fail

be unsuccessful in achieving one’s goal,
be unable to meet the standards set by [whatever, whoever]

Then this in Scott’s book.:

“The dirty little secret—the fact often denied—is that unlike the mythical epiphany, real creation is sloppy. Discovery is messy, exploration is dangerous. No one knows what he is going to get when he’s being creative. Filmmakers, painters, inventors, and entrepreneurs describe their work as a search: they explore the unknown hoping to find new things worth bringing into the world. And just like other kinds of explorers, the search for ideas demands risk: much of what’s found won’t be satisfactory.” (Berkun, The Myths of Innovation, p. 86)

So, failure is relative. You set your goals. You set your standards. Others set goals and standards, too. You meet them, you don’t. One person’s total failure is another person’s progress.