Cut Scenes
Imagine working days or weeks on a scene only for it to land on the cutting room floor. Ouch. A 30-second sequence in a 3-D animation can require over forty hours of labor to produce. It’s also not unheard of for ten to twelve people to work for over four weeks on a high-budget 3-D animation that’s only five seconds long. My son, who animates, will work on small details like an amulet or the design on a sword’s hilt for an entire day. These small details are what bring animations to life, but they can feel like a gut-wrenching failure when cuts happen. The lost time can’t be given back.
But was it truly a loss?
Author and leadership coach John Maxwell says in his book, Return on Failure, that everything worthwhile is hard work. To reach success, we have to climb uphill. No one gets to the top and wonders, how did I wind up here? They remember the hard work and struggle.
For each of my books, I have a saved document of deleted scenes. Some were repetitive and got cut. Others I mulled over for hours or days. Some I reworked, agonizing over each word, only for my editor to nix the entire scene in the end. I keep these scenes in a saved file because I don’t have the heart to delete them. I tell myself I may use them later in another book, but I’ve never rehashed a single deleted scene. I have an entire 400-page novel that took me over a year to write, that will never leave my computer.
Do I consider these failures? Well…more like R&D, research and development.
John Maxwell also teaches that we must keep failure and success close. If failure drops and success rises, you get arrogance. If success drops and failure rises, you get discouragement. When they run side by side, they even each other out. The lows aren’t as low, and the highs aren’t as high.
Keeping our successes and failures close keeps us humble. We realize our success is by God’s grace. That He tipped us over the odds stacked against us and into the net. And when we fail, it’s our response to failure that counts. God has a lesson for us in the process. He’s honing our character, and He will continue to develop our perseverance, working in us and through us, sustaining us until we have finished the race He marked out for our lives.
When someone congratulates me on writing so many books, I remember the doubts, tears, and rejections. Everything worthwhile requires hard work, but I also remember how God stayed with me through the whole learning and character-building process. It is His goodness that humbled, taught, and sustained me.
And I wouldn’t cut a thing.
