The Definition of Success

After struggling with a cold most of this past weekend, I didn’t get a chance to do much of anything except lay in bed and float in and out of consciousness.

But yesterday, I stumbled across a LA Times essay by writer Dani Shapiro, A Writing Career Becomes Harder to Scale

She talks about how the landscape of writing has changed she since she started. Here’s an excerpt of her observation:

“But in the last several years, I’ve watched friends and colleagues suddenly find themselves without publishers after having brought out many books. Writers now use words like “track” and “mid-list” and “brand” and “platform.” They tweet and blog and make Facebook friends in the time they used to spend writing. Authors who stumble can find themselves quickly in dire straits. How, under these conditions, can a writer take the risks required to create something original and resonant and true?”

I find this observation interesting because aspiring writers find themselves in this conundrum. With the new digital age, writers are told that that they must do these things—have a blog and social network accounts to be accessible online to the potential readers, agents, and publishers. But in the end, does it help the writer or hurt the writer? Could this time be better spent on working and studying the craft?

It all comes down to perspective. It’s one thing to do those things because you enjoy them for their own benefits (as I do) and it’s another to do them because you think it’s required to get published.

There’s that word: Published.

As writers, this word is always in the back of our mind. But you must ask the question: What if I never get published?

Would you still write? Would you still be online and blog or update your status on Twitter? It’s more of a question of doing something because you want to connect with other writers who have the same interests and form relationships. It’s a total different thing if you are doing it to “get ahead” or “get noticed” or maybe even to “get published.”

Because what if nothing happens? What if you never get that book contract?

I love when Dani Shapiro references an essay by Ted Solotaroff:

“Perhaps there is a clue to be found near the end of Solotaroff’s essay: ‘Writing itself, if not misunderstood and abused, becomes a way of empowering the writing self. It converts anger and disappointment into deliberate and durable aggression, the writer’s main source of energy. It converts sorrow and self-pity into empathy, the writer’s main means of relating to otherness. Similarly, his wounded innocence turns into irony, his silliness into wit, his guilt into judgment, his oddness into originality, his perverseness into his stinger.’”

Writing is one of the few professions where the “measurement” of success— a book contract — is not guaranteed. But I also believe that publication is only a part of being a writer. Of course you want your words to be read. You want that book contract. But for me, it has to go deeper. Because you don’t know how long the journey will be or where it will end. You must have something else besides the promise of a contract to sustain you during those form rejections and close calls.

For me, I believe you have to love writing for its own sake. And you have to define your own definition of “success” when it comes to your writing.