What Does Success Mean to You?

[The Dark One]

None of that is inconsistent with anything else posted so far, it just means your concept of success is pluralistic and multi-phased.

Mind you, I sincerely doubt anyone could be either subjectively fulfilled or objectively successful going by your final couplet definition...

 

[Susan Gourley]

I've had some publishing success with small presses, but I'd still like to get that big contract with TOR. Never made enough to quit the day job but not many writers do. Can't quote the exact percentage who can support themselves with writing alone, but I know it's small. I feel successful to a point, but also feel like there is a lot further to go.

 

[Kasper Hviid]

Success is not part of my world view—I can barely spell it! Sure, I have things that I'd accomplished, small victories and suchlike, but I don't really feel different from it. So for me, this idea of reaching the goal line of success doesn't really compute. Yet, I believe in striving forward, not because it leads to any finite goal state, but because that is what life is.

 

[ThinkerX]

'success as a ladder' somebody mentioned earlier in this thread. Fair assessment.

For me, the first few rungs were just finishing coherent stories - first rough drafts, then polished short stories, then laboriously rewritten novels (half a dozen of them thus far.) Getting the one short published was another rung. Next rung - getting the novels polished enough to put on Amazon, and basking in the joy of watching it sell fifty or eighty times before fading into oblivion.

At the moment, though, success is completing the long, slow, painful rewrite of the current WIP.

 

[Kasper Hviid]

SUC-CESS', n. [Fr. succès ; L. successus.] 1. The favorable or prosperous termination of any thing attempted; a termination which answers the purpose intended ; usually, when without an epithet, in a good sense. 2. Succession; [obs.]
—An American Dictionary of the English Language