Screw “Success”

According to the Google search I just did, success is “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.” If you apply that to writing, then success would be the completion of whatever you are writing.

As writers, I think we all know that it isn’t that simple.

Writing isn’t a linear process. It’s not even a circular process. If you’ve watched The Good Place, you have seen the “Jeremy Bearimy” explanation of time (if you haven’t watched The Good Place, you really should). Anyway, it basically shows that time loops forward and backwards and traces over itself. The line of time looks very similar to the way “Jeremy Bearimy” looks written in cursive.

I think writing is a lot like that.

We start writing, and then we delete. We forge ahead and re-write, and then delete some pieces, but keep others. Maybe we re-write some of the things we had previously deleted. The process never really ends, even if you stop revising. I still think of essays that I have written, long ago, and how I would change them now. I probably won’t ever actually change them (mostly because I don’t know where they are), but I’m still mentally re-writing those papers. We don’t stop writing, even after we have submitted, posted, published, or even hidden the piece. Considering this, does success in writing even exist?

Here’s what I have to say on the matter: who cares?

Trying to define ourselves by others’ perception of success, or even by our own perception of success, has a dangerous potential to be harmful to us as writers.

There’s nothing wrong with setting goals, or even striving to be published. I’m just saying that I don’t think “being successful” as a writer is what makes you a writer.

Writing makes you a writer — not “success.”