hummingwolf | (no subject)

Back in the summer I left this comment in somebody else's journal:

You've got interesting ideas. You have enough raw talent that you're already a good writer, perhaps in need of some polishing but good nonetheless. With some work on your part, you could be an excellent writer. Combining your wordsmithing and your ideas, perhaps you could even be a great writer.

But I'm not going to encourage you to write because you'll be rich and famous and a critical darling one day. All of that "success" stuff is too dependent on the whims of fashion, word-of-mouth, the economy, publicity, and other things over which you have virtually no control.

The truth of the matter is that, no matter how good you are and how hard you work, one day you could find yourself an old man at a boring job you took to pay the bills because you never could get published anywhere but here, never had your writing read by anyone but a relatively small audience. You will have brought joy to a few people's lives, made a few people think deeply, but you will not have been "successful" as the common man defines success.

The most likely alternative to that scenario, of course, is that one day you will find yourself an old man in a boring job you took to pay the bills because you were too afraid of failure to even try to write anymore. In this case, your words will have brought joy to no-one, and the only thoughts you will have made people think are thoughts that they didn't want to be an old bitter grouch like you. You are quite right when you say that fear is your enemy.

The real question isn't "Can I be a successful writer?" but "How much of a coward am I willing to be?"

(This has been yet another comment that's written almost as much to me as it is to you. :-))

Y'know, I make a surprising amount of sense sometimes.

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better than most