Writing Success is Not the Same as Successful Writing
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Like a lot of writers out there, I made a fundamental error for a long time. I assumed that success as a writer was a mark of successful writing. That’s not true. These are categorically different things and, as writers, we need to keep the distinction firmly in mind.
What is Successful Writing?
Successful writing is, in the end, writing that achieves its intended goal. Did you set out to write a novel? Did you write it? You did? Awesome! That’s successful writing. You set a goal and reached it. Did you set out to write an article about why the term “mommy blogger” is one you should avoid like the plague? Did you write it? If you did, that’s successful writing.
Finishing isn’t the only thing that matters, but finishing is the first major step in successful writing. If you don’t finish, the writing can never achieve any of its other goals.
Of course, successful writing also means employing a particular set of skills to the task of writing. Is it grammatically correct? Typo free? Does it use an appropriate structure? Have I chosen the right word and not its first cousin? Have I avoided fallacious reasoning? Are the facts correct? Does it evoke the proper emotional response or engage the intellect? Does it inform? All of these are hallmarks of successful writing as well.
Writing is an activity to which we can apply a loosely defined body of rules, conventions and techniques. If you’re doing that and, preferably, doing that well, you are successfully writing.
The question that does not apply to whether something is successful writing is this: Did it sell a lot of copies? Other variants of this question go along these lines. Did it get a lot of hits/likes/shares/pins/tweets/retweets and so on? None of these have anything to do with successfully writing something.
What is Writing Success?
Writing success, though sometimes correlated with successful writing, is about an entirely different set of rules, conventions and outcomes. Writing success is all about the sales numbers, the hits, the shares, the tweets, retweets and pins. Writing success is about reaching a level of popularity, not about how well or poorly you engage in the activity of writing.
We can all point to books, articles, and blog posts that demonstrate a profound failure in the actual activity of writing that are, nonetheless, writing successes. They are juggernauts that no amount of reason, critical commentary or the rules of grammar can seem to bring down.
Sometimes these bits of atrocious writing tap into something that’s been nagging at the collective unconscious of the country, world, or intercybernetwebspace. Other times they rise to the top by being the first to talk about a particular trend. Other times, there seems to be no explanation for it. That doesn’t mean the authors of these pieces are successfully writing, just experiencing writing success.
The next time you sit down with a piece of your writing, look at it from the perspective of successfully writing and not just from the perspective of writing success. Look at all the things you did right with it and forget about whether the world at large loves it to pieces. I bet you’ll discover that you are, in fact, successfully writing.
