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Success is getting bad writing news one day -- a bad review, rejected manuscript, nobody reads your blog -- and sitting down to write the next.

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This comes right as I was pondering this question. I think that, consciously, I realize the act of writing itself is what’s most fulfilling and success is getting to do it day in and day out, but on a deeper level, I feel the need for an audience. Without people who read my work, it feels like it’s just me in an echo chamber, and that can drive one crazy. Ultimately, I think success is knowing that your words have reached somebody.

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Thank you for these thoughts, Kathy! I've been thinking about this a lot lately too, namely how as soon as one goal is achieved, we want the next thing. I do feel those elusive, big, ego goals drive me to an extent, at least right now in my writing journey, yet I also feel a truer, more lasting kind of success happens when I start feeling a piece click into place - and this is directly related to showing up regularly to do the work. And then of course, as others have said, there's the feeling of success when others connect with the piece. Such a nuanced word and so many layers.

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Dec 16, 2022Liked by Kathy Fish

Thank you for this! It resonates so hard. I have three of the four examples you list that inhibit goal-making, and I can’t bear to hear the word goal anymore!

I mentioned recently in my health-condition support group that maybe we don’t need goals - because we have an unpredictable condition that makes us feel bad enough. For me, I have an overall understanding of where I want to go with writing for example, but I take a small action, see how it works for me, and iterate from there. I feel like this allows scope for change and imagination. Two of my healthcare practitioners work this way with my therapies,and I realised why they are so effective, I never feel l’ve ‘failed’ to meet a goal. ✨ go well into the new year 💕

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Beautiful, perfectly-timed reminder, Kathy. Such beautiful answers, especially Maureen Langloss, that writing is a way to create meaning and therefore a meaningful life. Gorgeous. Thanks so much.

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My pleasure, Kathy! :-D

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Recently I sent a couple of pieces to a couple of friends and aksed what they thought of them. I was pleased with them but had a couple of doubts about a couple of things. oth my friends praised my writing but raised a couple of points about the work. Guess what. they were the things I'd been bothered by. Their comments have helped my get closer to what I wanted to say. And I realised also that this kind of criticism is wonderful. Is it enough though that a couple of friends liked it? Well, it will do for a start and it's made me wonder if one day someone I don't know might read my work and think if's pretty good, to get a couple of responses from A. Nonymous-Other who thinks it's OK would be tremendous.

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Great piece, thank you! I love that you've shared all these voices and varied perceptions of 'success'. Inspiring as always ❤️

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I’m reminded of the movie Caddy Shack. The Judge asks Chevy Chases’ character “If you don’t keep score, how do you measure yourself against other golfers?” And he says “By height.”

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Dec 18, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022Liked by Kathy Fish

I’m a lifelong writer and I write to cultivate myself and my language which I use in my clinical work. I’m also a discourse analyst and I think of human bodies as the artifacts of millions of years of texts from the level of DNA and on up. Last week I heard the text of one of my poems coming out of my mouth to explain something difficult to a struggling young woman. I publish to audiences of one person at a time and hearing that poem and seeing the look on her face was a milestone!

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Wonderful, Kathy! You are a true, giving teacher. So enjoyed reading this <3

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Wonderful, Kathy! You are a true, giving teacher. So enjoyed reading this <3

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So many great thoughts! I need my goals there to help me grow - otherwise I have a terrible habit of helping everyone else reach theirs and mine get left. Instead of celebrating the success, I now celebrate my attempts - the finished grant proposal, meeting the submission, the ‘finishing’ of a project. I am trying to teach myself that these are more important than the result or ‘success’ that does or doesn’t come. It’s starting to work... :)

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Yesterday, during a FaceTime call, a subscriber told me she showed her husband one of my works, and he enjoyed my free verse poem. He said it resonated deeply in him. That was success for me, to touch a reader, and to have had a member of my small community of readers share my work!

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Dec 16, 2022Liked by Kathy Fish

I'm pleased to see more posts like this. I hate the 'you must write every day' type of advice - it may be brilliant for some but for many it doesn't work for the reasons you point out and can actually be inhibiting. I don't consider myself a successful writer by many standards - have earned only a few pounds/dollars, have had only a small number of competition wins/placements but loads of non placements and rejections, novel not published but I still send stuff out and have had 70 pieces of my work published in one form or another and I've had people tell me that they enjoyed my work so neither do I consider myself a failure.

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Success is subjective. Externally--in terms of society--I think it’s broadly and superficially denoted as wealth, fame, notoriety. But more honestly, internally, and reflectively, it depends on each individual human heart. For me? At 40, ditching the traditional route I’ve had some success in but have been wildly, hungrily chasing for the past 15 years and writing on Substack has been The Thing. Writing quality articles and doing it consistently according to my own rhythm; this, to me, is success. And the fact that this platform allows me to write authentically, honestly, and without worry of ideological censorship.

Michael Mohr

‘Sincere American Writing’

https://michaelmohr.substack.com/

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