Signal & Spark: what dung beetles have taught me about failure
And an excerpt from Laura Stanfill's new book!
🌸 Signal & Spark — August edition
Hello dear Joy Risers,
Welcome to Signal & Spark, your monthly free dispatch of The Joy Rise. Thank you, as ever, for being here.
⚡️ Signal: news from my world
I recently had the joy of chatting with the wonderful Dr Marion Piper about creativity, courage, and connection on her podcast What Doesn’t Kill Us.
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.I also spoke publicly for the first time about my new novel (!!) THE WORLD BENEATH HER FEET, which will be published in ANZ by HarperCollins Australia in 2026. ✨
✨ Spark: inspiration from the wider one
I met Pacific Northwest publisher and writer Laura Stanfill about a decade ago, through emails with our mutual friend and author, Kate Gray. Laura and I stayed in touch online, and last year we finally met in person when she came to my US book tour event at Powell’s Books in Portland. Joy!
This month’s Spark comes from the opening of Laura’s new book Imagine a Door: A Writer’s Guide to Unlock Your Story, Choose a Publishing Path, and Honor the Creative Journey.
I love how powerfully Laura’s words capture the wonder, possibility, fragility and peril of the doors we can open, and close, on ourselves and our creativity.
📖 Excerpt from Imagine a Door by Laura Stanfill
Imagine a door. You turn the handle and find yourself in a —
Kitchen / Courtyard / Underground cave / Jungle / Corporate boardroom / Bedroom / Cockpit / Dark alley / School
You hear —
A car alarm / Branches moving in the wind / Water droplets / An unfamiliar bird call / A droning, monotone presentation / Snoring / Steady, high-pitched beeps / Nothing / A yelling adult
You feel—
Worried; your car, again? / Soothed / Excited—is there a hidden hot spring? / Delighted and curious / Impatient / Annoyed / Confused—hello? / Hesitation / A thrill of disobedience
You decide —
That none of these scenarios are financially viable.
That none of these directions are going to earn you an agent or a six-figure publishing deal or even a small-advance agreement with a reputable small press.
That you, obviously, in the ecstatically creative throes of imagining a door, have conjured exactly nothing of value, because wherever your story leads, it’s not going to get you enough social media followers to prove you have an audience to an agent who cares about metrics.
Besides, you’ve probably chosen the wrong protagonist.
You still haven’t figured out how to make dialogue seem realistic without being boring.
You have dinner to conjure.
The imagined door slams shut. The story pieces fall and shatter.
You walk away, the paragraph dangling mid-sentence, the chapter unfinished.
💩 On failure, creativity… and dung beetles
Reading Laura’s words reminded me how painful those shattered story pieces can feel: every one like a small, sharp failure.
And then, as I’ve been prone to do since writing The House That Joy Built, thinking about failure got me thinking of dung beetles.
Truly. Stay with me.
As you might know, dung beetles depend entirely on waste, repurposing the literal shit of other animals to survive. They evolved this way an estimated 130 million years ago. They’ve been turning shit into their livelihood for that long.
♻️ What if it isn’t failure?
Hand on my heart, now when I’m writing and I feel the creep of shame, fearing I’ve made a mistake in my manuscript or I begin to perceive that I might have failed in my work, I pause. And I honestly think of dung beetles.
I ask myself… what if the “shit” you’ve made is useful? Necessary?
What if what you think has been a waste (of time, energy, or effort) is something you needed to create so that you could transform it into something else… and learn about yourself along the way?
🌌 And here’s a little more magic…
As if the dung beetle wasn’t already offering enough to our creativity: the nocturnal African dung beetle is one of the few invertebrates that navigates and orients itself using the Milky Way (!!!).
So. Here we are.
Us, our creativity, and dung beetles.
Even when we’re surrounded by shit, it pays to keep our eyes on the stars.
Even when we’re buried in shit, the opportunity for transformation is within us.
There is still the possibility of miracles. There is, somehow, still beauty.
🪲 This is the work of creativity: nothing is wasted.
🪄 Provocations for the “shit” times in creativity
I wanted to leave you with some questions to tuck into your heart sleeve.
As ever, hold what resonates, leave the rest:
How would your experience of creativity shift if it was impossible to fail — if your only goal was to experience the joy of creating?
What happens if you change the language you use with yourself about failure?
I’m failing at creating → I’m trying out creating.
This project is a failure → This project is me trying, learning, and becoming.
Do you have any “wasted” ideas you could (forgive the pun) dung-beetle-the-shit-out-of and turn into something repurposed? Maybe even beautiful?
If you’d like to read more from Laura, you can find her on Substack here or order her book: AU | US | UK.
See you next month, and thank you for being here. With me, Laura, and the dung beetles.
As always, with a light left on,
🌸 Thank You
If something here has stirred your heart or imagination, you can:
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In whatever capacity you’re able to be here, thank you for your readership and support.
Your presence genuinely makes all the difference.
💬 More ways to connect
💌 If you’d like to write to me with your question about creativity, please do, here. I answer reader questions in Signal & Spark issues of The Joy Rise - read one here.
🦋 If this is the first time of you’ve received or read The Joy Rise, you can learn more about me and this space here.
🧚 In case you missed it:
This totally candid, natural photo of me casually wearing headphones while holding a Sharpie (😜) exists because my monthly, solo podcast, Notes to Self, went live last week for paid subscribers! Scroll down for a tiny sample + link to the first episode.
🪺 Coming in the next issue for paid subscribers:
💚 THE WORK of WONDER
Tools and prompts to support your creative life.
An exploration of an obstacle to creativity, offering tools and ideas that I use to respond and reconnect with imagination, and make what matters. Is there a specific obstacle that you’d love me to write about? Let me know.
I think « failure » is not a word that should be used in creative practice. The notion of failure is so irrelevant in the subjective exercise of creating art. What is shit to some is fertile compost to others.
I love this idea of value in the mess, Holly! We are so quick to spit on our efforts that don't work out, but that ignores the huge value of being creative just to be creative. Not everything needs to be shared or sold. Thank you for sharing a bit of my book too!