I’ve been having a little bit of success with my writing recently. A story of mine was just published in Erie Tales 17: Cursed Objects and I’ve got another story under contract for another super cool thing that I can’t share any details about yet. So, all this has me excited about writing again.
Which got me thinking about achievement and my relationship with it.
I’ll use the words success and achievement interchangeably here, even though success is more general and achievement is specific. In my mind, they mean close enough to the same thing and I don’t want to use the same word over and and over and over and…
Well, you get the point.
In the last few years, while writing this blog and talking with my partner and friends, I’ve come to understand a lot about myself. After I finished Clean Freak, got it published, was out promoting and selling it, I realize now that I assumed that achievement had unlocked something for me. I wrote several first chapters over the years since, not being able to go the distance on anything. I understand now that my block was because I had developed a process over several years of writing stories that I thought that my achievement meant I could bypass.
But success didn’t unlock anything. Which was kind of a disappointment.
In fact, success didn’t really change anything at all. I got a novel published. I had a story in an award-winning anthology. And I still got rejection letters. Like, a frustrating number of rejection letters. My success started to feel like something that I hadn’t earned through hard work and good stories, but something that was a fluke.
Which was a huge disappointment.
The real issue, as I’ve come to understand it, is the shift from intrinsic motivation to extrinsic motivation. Now, if you are going to try to make a career out of something, you have to accept that there will be extrinsic aspects to it. There’s just no way around that. But, as I’ve come to realize, I started to love the achievement more than the work. No amount of success changes the work. A story is still written one word at a time. And for me, notebook work is still necessary to understanding the story and its characters and world. It was foolish of me to think that anything changed that.
In order to keep going, you have the love the work. You have to love it above all else. Riding bikes has taught me that just because you love something, doesn’t mean you’ll love it every day. But you have to love it in order to keep doing it. A little achievement is nice. But if that’s the only reason you’re doing something, your enjoyment of it will be tied to achievement. I’ve found that that doesn’t work for me.
I had to ask myself if I still love the work.
I do. I love stories. I love the conscientiousness that goes into building them, character and plot and everything. I love the sudden insights that feel like I’m discovering the story rather than creating it. I love those lines that feel like Truth, that I hope reach beyond the story to something fundamental.
I’m not going to pretend that I don’t want success or achievement. That would be silly and a lie. But I think I’m in a place now that I can enjoy success and the work separately.
