Ah, writing success! Doesn’t every author out there want a sea of eager readers waiting to snap up their book? Yes, of course they do. Wouldn’t that mean ‘success’? Of course it depends on what you consider a ‘sea’ of eager readers to be. A hundred readers? A thousand? Millions of readers?
It seems to me that there isn’t a consistent definition of success as a writer. It tends to be based on arbitrary factors, often on the commercial side of the business: how much money an author earns, or whether they can make a living from it or not. On the other hand, some writers view success as the ability to finish a book-length work. If we’re talking purely craft, it certainly can take years to write a novel-length book. My first novel took me five years to finish – longer than my university degree, which took three years. But is the length of time it takes to create a book, or the word count, a marker of success as a writer? What if no one reads that book because the author decides not to share it with the world? That was the certainly the case for my five-years-to-the-finish-line book; I decided it wasn’t good enough and archived it. Does that mean it doesn’t qualify as a success?
No, I wouldn’t say so. Yes, it is a success to finish a book, but my view of success as a writer would tend to incorporate more than solely the craft. A little dash of the commercial side is important too. I think that defining success as a writer would be more a balance of both, though maybe leaning more on the craft side. For me, the ability to write the story that you want to share with the world, and find an audience who want to read your work in addition, is how I would define success.
Leilanie Stewart 