Feeling Successful

November 3, 2008

I remember watching an interview with Elmore Leonard a number of years ago and the interviewer asked him at which book did he feel like he was a success? His fifth? His sixth? When his 18th or 19th finally broke through?

Leonard said, "I've always felt like a success."

It was a nice answer and Leonard, I've often felt, never allows himself to be manipulated by interviewers. I don't know if he actually felt that way or not and it doesn't matter, really, because it's a good thing to remind yourself.

I have a sign up in my office that says:

SUCCESS 

IS A

JOURNEY

NOT A

DESTINATION

Sometimes I even remember to believe it.

As you know, I'm currently "between contracts" in my fiction life. We do have some things out in the marketplace and hopefully something positive will happen with them.

Then I was thinking of the top shelf in my book case. The one that has all the copies of my books--the hardcover of SHOW BUSINESS IS MURDER, an anthology that has my short story, "Murder at the Heartbreak Hotel" in it. The two Derek Stillwater novels plus the French, German and Slovak translation versions. The copies of CATFISH GURU, the novella collection I published through iUniverse via a Mystery Writers of America introductory program (so it cost me nothing), and DIRTY DEEDS, my first novel. Also, a spiral bound galley of BLOOD SECRETS, the one that got away, the novel that was supposed to be published by Write Way Publishing only they went bankrupt 6 months prior to publication.

And I thought: If I never published another novel in my entire life, this would still be significant. You could easily look back at your life and say, "Hey, I published three novels and a collection of novellas and has a short story appear in a major anthology, that don't suck."

I realize also that I make a good living as a freelance writer and plan to continue doing so for the next, oh, 30 or 35 years or so (I'm 44). I'm sure there will be some ups and downs. I'm sure I'll publish some big things, market reports, probably ghostwrite some nonfiction books or write nonfiction books, and if I keep at it, I should get some more novels published (assuming that in that time the publishing paradigm doesn't shift so dramatically that everyone just publishes their own books electronically and people read them on their Kindles).

Still, what's success?

The publishing business can make otherwise successful people feel like the most miserable failures.

So I'm here to suggest that only you can define success. Maybe that is: I wrote today.

Maybe it's: I wrote a novel and completed it.

Maybe it's: I wrote a story and got it published. Or I wrote it and someone read it and said they liked it. Or maybe it's getting published. Foreign sales. A movie deal. Making a living as a writer.

Maybe it's: I wrote today and enjoyed it.

Maybe it's: I'm a happy person with a good marriage and great kids and everything else is merely window dressing or the cherry on top or ice cream with your cake.

I don't know. I do know that it's easy to start thinking you're a failure if your book doesn't get published, if it doesn't get a big advance, if you don't get a paperback sale, or a movie sale, or foreign sales, or a multi-book contract, or good reviews, or...

But those are all defined by someone else.

You have to decide what's successful for you.

Me? I started writing fiction regularly without getting all angst-y about it. I picked up a new client today.

So tell me: what success have you had lately?

Cheers,

Mark Terry