"Failure is not an option"

For a lot of people and in a lot of instances this is a motto to stand by. I must admit that I find myself uttering those words from time to time. What do we turn to when we realise that not only is failure an option but an inevitability. Nobody succeeds all the time.

This isn't some fatalist speech I'm just shocked on a  daily basis when people don't make the most out of every chance they get. Especially when it's as easy as asking a question.

I had my first experience of hiring artists to work on my upcoming book and it was actually quite a challenging process to choose who to commission to work on the piece.

In fact it came down to some very minor reasons which eventually tipped the balance. Whatever the reasons do you know how many artists out of all of the ones I approached asked why I didn't pick them?

Zero.

None of them. It's crazy in my mind. It's like going for a job interview; getting turned down and not asking why you weren't picked. What's going to stop you from making that same mistake the next time?

I know art is a subjective decision at the end of the day as to which you like more. Some of the artists however I dismissed as their portfolio's didn't show the kind of art I was looking for. I dare say that most of these artists have a much larger portfolio that wasn't on their blogs or websites and could quite easily have turned round and said, "Hold fire on that decision, I might just have a piece that shows what you're looking for"

Now I might be fairly new to the whole working with freelancers and artists for that matter, but from my experience of life and job hunting, it's the proactive people that get ahead.

~Fraser