If at first, you don't succeed...

That's the creed that we learned by repitition when we were kids. What we will likely tell our own successors. Try, try again. Because everything in this world can be earned if you fight for it, relentlessly and whole-heartedly.

It's even the theme of one of the stories in Big Fish. The one, ironically, where the main character's father is explaining the courtship of his mother. He takes every opportunity to learn more about her, what she likes, where she lives, what she does. And the son of a gun gets the dame. They get married with the little money that he has, and they live together happily. Not likely ever after, but happily all the same.

When I think about that now, I also think of when I worked on staff at my high school newspaper. Everyone on staff, except for a couple of lucky souls, were editors or co-editors of one section or another. What being an editor entailed was putting together the page layout of your section, deciding what stories would run every month, and the usual reporting slag that everyone on staff had to subject themselves to. After all, we were a newspaper of about 12 workers strong.

And usually things went running pretty smoothly. Sure, it was a grind writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting (no joke, four draft minimum). But we did it because there was something to it all that we felt, this was fun to do, and it was worth doing. The people need news.

But there were times when life outside of the newsroom would take over. And it wasn't that we couldn't work on the paper. Rather, we let our stories slide because it felt good to not write up a draft this day or that day. We were all guilty of it at least once, so there isn't anyone who can or should shoulder all of the blame.

Still, when we counted on others to do their share of a section, it was on them. We would do everything we had to in order to get our parts of the final product to the printers, and if they needed help, we were glad to offer (it was our asses on the line, after all).

But when it came right down to it, we had made an agreement that we would split the work. To make deadline, we would all rely on each other.

And putting your hope in somebody else can sometimes lead to a deadline being missed. It's a disappointment to be let down by somebody else, but if you don't make every effort to do everything you can do, the person you should really be disappointed in is yourself.

Others have their own stuff to do. Their own stories to write. If them doing their own thing lets you down now and then, all you can do is make a late deadline, and give the next shot your all.