What Determines Success or Failure?

By now in life you’ve likely experienced the elation of personal success and the crush of failure. In the best fiction and most successful films, you feel those same sensations for the characters. You cheer when they succeed. You mourn when they fail. So, what determines success or failure?

If you judge solely on your feelings, you may go wrong. But emotions don’t lie, you say. Yes, often they do. Emotions can flair up based on other people’s judgements — reviews, comments, praise, criticism, approval, sales. Look beyond the opposing sides of success and failure and beyond your emotional reactions for the truth.

Success or Failure

A line from a recent Amazon review for The Plot Whisperer — In short, just another B.S. how-to by someone who never cut it in the fiction market — got me thinking about success and failure. Thanks to earlier positive and the other negative reviews for The Plot Whisperer, I’m not as crushed as I would have been if it had been the first. And the truth is, if you judge my performance in the fiction market as most would, yes, I suppose I could be seen as a failure.

I find helpful in life not to judge, believing success and failure come from the same place. If you feel compelled to judge your performance as a success or a failure, look to your goals.

I had 1 goal in publishing Parallel Lives (a novel of the 1960s). I simply wanted to bust through the brick wall I’d erected keeping me from publishing my own fiction. Yes, I’ve help countless writers meet their writing goals. I’d just never allowed myself that goal.

How about you? The writing world is fraught with rejection and criticism. Do you let others define your successes and failures? Sift out the helpful and disregard the rest?