There are so many ways to be a writer.
Just to start with, there are numerous forms for the written word: poetry, essays, short stories, novels, memoirs, philosophic works, deep reporting, journalism of many types, advertising, plays, movies, television, speeches …
In the case of fiction in particular, some types are very experimental, some are very commercial, some fit neatly into genre categories — SF, fantasy, “literary”, porn — some don’t fit at all.
There are best sellers and books that barely sell. There are books that are recognized only after the author is long dead.
There are probably many very good books that never get noticed. There are many bad books that make lots of money.
There are a few writers who get rich, a few who get famous. Some win all the prizes; some never even make the short list.
There are lots of writers with day jobs. Some of them are trying to figure out how to quit their day jobs.
If what really matters to you is wealth and fame, there are probably easier paths than the creative ones.
So working on the assumption that you’re not likely to end up wealthy or famous or a Nobel Laureate, what is it that would make you feel successful as a writer?
I think this is an important question and one that can keep some of us from descending into the sloughs of despair. It’s also useful in helping writers starting out figure out what they really want from their career, which is why I started with an incomplete list of all the ways to be a writer.
If you can define what you want, you have a metric to determine success.
And, of course, there are some disconnects in the process. For example, many, many writers would like to quit their day jobs and write full time. This is despite the fact that pretty much all advice on becoming a writer starts with “don’t quit your day job.”
(Poets are more sensible about this than fiction writers, because they know the number of poets making a living from poetry is minuscule.)
Of course, many people who aren’t writers also want to quit their day jobs so they can spend time doing things they enjoy. This is not an unreasonable desire, given how awful many jobs are.
(I recommend David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs here as a reminder that an incredible number of jobs are not only annoying, but useless for anything except transferring a pittance of money to the worker.)
Many day jobs can suck all the emotional energy out of you, leaving you with nothing to use when writing. And almost all of them involve putting up with bureaucratic nonsense that makes you want to scream, even if the work itself is fine.
But here’s the thing: given that very few writers without day jobs are going to hit the level of success that provides financial security without doing a lot of scrambling to make money happen, deciding to go out on your own means you’re going to do all the underpinning work yourself. The freelance life looks wonderful, but there are all those things you have to do besides write.
For some people, that’s great. Those people, especially if they’re also the kind of writers who can crank out a lot of work regularly, are probably well-suited for hybrid or self-publishing or for turning out successful series in commercial genres.
For others, it’s a nightmare. They might still want to quit their day job, but what they really want to be is one of those writers we’ve all heard about who is beloved of some editor or publisher that not only publishes everything they do, but makes sure they turn it out and makes sure it gets noticed.
I think that is harder to find than wealth or fame.
For those of us not suited for the freelance life who also lack a well-employed spouse or a trust fund or a loving publisher, I suspect the solution is a day job that doesn’t drain you dry.
And here’s another question: what about a writing day job?
Some years back, I was seeing an acupuncturist for various aches and admitted that I was also feeling very stressed because of trying to balance my day job (which was as a legal journalist), my fiction writing, and my Aikido training.
She asked if I couldn’t be satisfied with the writing I did in my day job.
The answer wasn’t just “No.” It was “Hell, no.” I was, in fact, shocked that she even considered it.
Because while I did write in the day job and did find it satisfactory work, it did not feed my soul the way writing fiction does.
Nothing feeds my soul the way writing something that matters to me – which, by the way, includes essays and poetry as well as stories – does.
(Nothing feeds my soul the way physical movement does, either, which is why giving up Aikido or the other stuff I do these days has never been an option.)
In my case, that day job was probably the best of all possible choices. It has, in fact, enabled me to retire comfortably with a pension and savings. It was interesting work, taught me a lot about writing on the sentence level, and it didn’t go home with me.
There might not have been enough hours in the day for everything – the perfect job for me probably would have been half-time, but I couldn’t afford that – but in the end it worked out pretty well. I wrote a lot of short stories, though I didn’t really get around to novels until I retired.
So that brings me back to what I consider success. At one point it was quitting my day job and supporting myself with my own writing. That one never worked out and was probably as pie-in-the-sky as fame and fortune (which I don’t think I cared much about) and having a publisher/editor who loved my work and made it possible for me to do it (which I probably did desire).
Now I think my definition of success is to write things that matter to me, have them published, and have them acknowledged and respected.
That first point is important: it isn’t just writing, but writing things that matter to me, that defines success for me.
That may not be true for you. For some people, making a living from writing might be more important than writing their own material. In my case, I did make a living writing, but that didn’t meet my definition of writing success.
I know plenty of people who like to write novelizations, just as an example of something that I would only do if I were desperate for money. I’d much rather cover legal matters and analyze legal opinions than write novelizations.
I’m pretty sure there are also people who are happy writing about legal matters and don’t feel the need to write other things. There are a lot of good people doing that these days – mostly people like me who realized they didn’t want to practice law – and some of them are doing it on their terms.
But even if I had Elie Mystal’s or Dahlia Lithwick’s jobs, which allow them much more scope in critiquing the law than mine ever did, I don’t think that’s all I’d want to write about.
The trick here is figuring out what works for you, what leaves you satisfied at the end of the day, what makes you feel like you’ve done the work you needed to do.
People have different answers to this question. Find yours.