What is success? This was a question I finally had to ask myself. I thought, at one point, success was books sales, strangers leaving great reviews, fan emails, and motivation to keep writing. I had none of those. So after months of hating myself, my failures, I decided to quit.
Some call it “Imposter Syndrome”. The idea that I feel like I don’t belong with others that I view as successful. That wasn’t really it though. I’ve sold copies of my books. Not a ton and not many to actual friends and family (that’s a different issue that will require therapy to work through). I have sold to strangers, but only at in person events. I can sell my books. They apparently can’t sell themselves. And of those dozen-plus strangers, none have left a review. Which I have concluded can mean only one thing: the books actually suck. Despite my wife and kids saying otherwise, the hard evidence is that they aren’t good enough for others to read or like enough to say anything about. Not to me. Not to their friends.
Thus, I was going to quit writing. I’d already been accepted as a panelist at LTUE (see other posts for what this is) and didn’t want to let them down, so I figured it would be my last hurrah. My going away party. I didn’t want pity or guilt-buying so I said nothing to anyone. I just let it play out. However, several things happened:
- I told my wife and she gave me a guilt-trip about if I gave up, how was she supposed to keep going on her venture. See her amazing stuff at marbleeternal.com.
- I went to LTUE.
But you said you were going? Yeah. What I didn’t expect was that most of the panels that I was on or attended had something to say about mental health and working through your struggles. They asked that question about how do you define success and that I shouldn’t compare my success with others. Curse them! I was decided! I had been getting rid of stuff and cleaning up. I was going to be done!
Yet I walked away feeling like I should continue. Why? I’m still not sure. I don’t know what I define as success yet. Nothing in my life has changed to make it suddenly more worthwhile to keep going. I still only sold 3 sets of my trilogy at the book-signing event. I did sell a few more of my short story collections than that, but it’s not like I ran out of stock.
I’m still convinced my writing is the problem. I’m not sure how to fix it and shouldn’t go back and rework my existing trilogy. I’m not magically having more time to write (which is also a big problem), but I’ve continued down the path. I’m not going anywhere for now.
This is the Novel Mage saying, *POOF*
the Novel Mage 