The Write Ingredients: Success

Let’s look at the dictionary definition of success

What is Success?

In the writing life, the success we need can be nurtured by:

• NEVER accepting an editor’s rejection, or not winning a competition, as a failure – it is simply the one that got away! You still own that piece of writing so use it again for another market after you’ve reflected on whether it can be improved.
• ALWAYS believing that all time spent reading, writing, researching, planning, plotting is as important as the time you spend actually writing
• OFTEN listening to those that love you and appreciate your writing. My husband may be biased but I know he’d tell me if I wrote a load of rubbish.

Where do you find Success?

Just like Confidence and Inspiration, it’s not available on the High Street, is it? You must consider every writing-related activity as part of your chosen lifestyle.

Think about this:

I was a schoolteacher

• was I a total failure when a struggling pupil got one spelling right in the weekly test of 10 spellings?
• was I a total success when that same pupil got two spellings correct the following week?

Success cannot be measured in numbers. Yes, of course, a novelist on the Sunday Times Bestseller list (as seen on alltopbooks.com/sunday-times-chart/ (not an affiliate link) is more successful than me as I’ve not yet been published. So I do not make that comparison.

My own measure of success is:

• how writing makes me feel about myself
• whether it matters or not if I am ever published

How do you use Success?

I have noticed that the crime writers I read are very busy writing the next novel. Their success is fuelling hard work and absorbing their time. This cannot always be easy. My suggestion for the Later Writers reading this site is that you celebrate every time to complete a piece of writing whatever the outcome. Of course you will be thrilled at winning a competition or seeing a story published.

But is it true success if you do not enjoy writing the next thing?

𝓣𝓻𝓾𝓮 𝓢𝓾𝓬𝓬𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓲𝓼 …

𝓣𝓸𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓵𝔂 𝓢𝓾𝓫𝓳𝓮𝓬𝓽𝓲𝓿𝓮