“The Promise of Failure is a book I’ll be giving to my writing students. Rejection has always been part of every writer’s life, but the writer’s market is now more adversarial than ever before, and John McNally’s precept and example will help them find what it takes to survive in it. This book is both a compendium of good advice and a memoir of the life of a writer willing to try anything—really anything—and to stick with it against any odds. This book isn’t about failure; it’s about never giving up.”—Madison Smartt Bell, author, All Souls’ Rising 

“Beside Dillard’s The Writing Life and Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist, place John McNally’s The Promise of Failure. The book is a gut-funny, bone-honest memoir of the highs and lows (mostly lows) of a life-long writer. Read the book and you’ll learn what to do with all those rejection letters, all that bitterness at the success of other writers (proudly displayed on Facebook), all those abandoned novels and stories, and all those grim moods that make your every word seem stupid. There is a secret ‘yes’ in the negative McNally shows, and a wisdom deep and rare that arises only from suffering. This book, a gorgeously written account of the difficulty of writing, exemplifies that rising.”—Eric G. Wilson, author, Against Happiness