When Markus Zusak thinks about failure there are two defining moments.
One, surprisingly, is the slog of writing The Book Thief, his 2005 bestseller now adapted into the Oscar-nominated Hollywood film starring Geoffrey Rush.
But it's a significantly smaller moment of self-implosion, long before the renowned Australian author's writing days, that seemed far more discouraging.
At eight years old, Zusak was a budding discus thrower who made the school zone championships in his home city of Sydney.
"I was tiny. When we got there I was totally freaked out because there was a big cage around the circle which I'd never seen before," he tells AAP.
"I remember throwing three fouls, and I didn't cope very well with that failure."
That experience sparked in the young Zusak a new concept called motivation.
His father Helmut took his son out on one occasion in the pouring rain and watched him hurl his discus hundreds of times.
"It not only gave me the motivation to do so much better next time, it gave me a really nice moment with my dad," Zusak says.
"And that all came from an awful experience that felt like the end of the world to me."
It's seemingly insignificant on a life scale, but Zusak says the lesson defined his character in a way that would help shape him as a writer.
It's difficult to imagine Zusak fits the failure bill, with The Book Thief having spent more than 230 weeks on the New York Times best seller list.
But his deeply embedded fear of flopping is exactly what the five-time novelist says keeps him motoring.
He'll talk about his experiences as both a professional writer and part-time failure at TEDxSydney this weekend, including how he was sure The Book Thief would simply "die a really quick death".
Every day for three years in his late 20s Zusak sat slumped over his desk working on the novel, and on many of those sessions he reached for something special he couldn't quite touch.
The first half of the Nazi-era book took forever to write and a character or two just didn't slot in well.
All the while, the seemingly ubiquitous fear of failure hovered over his shoulder.
"There was actually a moment of real freedom when I thought, `well, no one's going to read it so I might as well just write it exactly how I want to," he says.
"I think writers are a bit predisposed to that anyway. Writers are the most miserable people on Earth but they enjoy every minute of it."
Zusak's advice for young writers navigating the challenging industry is simple.
"If being confident, almost cocky, and saying, `I'm the best bloody writer in the world', if that's what helps you get a book written, well that's what you have to do.
"If it's going, `I'm useless and this book will never be successful', then that's what you have to do. That seems to be my method."
It can be a dark place, he concedes, but he's learnt how to live with it and to a certain extent, understand it.
It's not a new phenomenon for the author whose first three manuscripts were roundly rejected by publishers before seven years later, his fourth, The Underdog, was finally taken on.
Fifteen years on and Zusak, now 38, still grapples with the same challenges despite being at the top of his industry.
He describes work on his latest book, Bridge of Clay, as a "nightmare".
It's six years overdue, and Zusak has found himself back in the familiar daily cycle of procrastination, frustration and hauling himself back to his desk the next day.
"There's a strong argument for saying I've totally lost it, it'll never get published and it's become that slump after the great success that so many people have," he jokes.
"But I often just remind myself the reason it's so hard is I haven't written this book before."
"It gets harder every time you fail, but again you just end up at the desk because that's what you want to do and it's what you want to be."
* TEDxSydney is on April 26 at the Sydney Opera House.
