What do you equate to success?

[cupiscent]

My biggest anxiety with my writing is that something problematic that I've internalised is going to come through without me realising. And indeed, this was born out in one of the nicest rejections I got on my first novel, where the agent pointed out a problematic thing that would mean fundamentally rearranging the whole book.

My coping mechanism for this is to try and be as mindful as I can, to ask opinions widely and to have a wide range of readers for my work, to seek out other mindful people for their input, but at the end of the day, I have to take the risk and face the consequences. For me, in this situation, that means getting it as good as I can, and then sending it out and seeing what comes back. And when it's rejection - or criticism - I need to weigh and measure that, and accept what is valid in order to improve going forward.

If you never risk, you stop improving.

Obviously Caged - and everyone else - needs to decide to what extent and in what way this is useful advice for your situation. But that's how I look at it: here is the preparation I can do to make sure I'm as ready as possible to jump, but there's no way to sky-dive without leaping.

 

[Letharg]

A great success would be finishing the first draft of my first novel (Right now I am at the halfway point with a thousand different plot point to consider).

In the long run I would like to have something published which would be an immense success but I'm not fretting to much over it. I know that this first novel will need major rewriting and rework before its anywhere ready to show and that my writing skills needs to improve a lot.

Another (hopefully) future success would be to win one of the contests on this forum. Considering how well many of the entries are, winning a contest would mean a huge milestone in my writing technique.

But every day I write more then my goal (1000 words a day) is a tiny accomplishment for me and I feel much better when I do. I, as many other of you have said, look for the small accomplishments in writing and try to congratulate myself for them. Such as the other day I figured out a new way of describing anxiety by looking at a man on the tram, that felt as a success.

 

[Caged Maiden]

@skip

Thank you sincerely for sharing your thoughts. It gives me a certain amount of peace to know I'm not the only one who feels sensitive (not sentimental, or sensitive in the way most folks are, fearing negative criticism) about submitting my work. I fairly have panic when I think about it. When I think my book might one day be sitting on a book shelf, next to real writers' books, I feel the lightness of breath that indicates I ought to change trains of thought or prepare to hyperventilate.

I have gotten loads of negative crits and my emotions are never involved. What makes a person perfectly competent in some ways but emotionally cripples them in a similar scenario--with a different subject? It's stupid, isn't it.

I appreciate you sharing your experience and I can so relate to what you dealt with. You know, when I get a raving positive review from a reader (and this novel got almost all positive reviews on scribophile just a couple months ago for the first four or five chapters), I almost feel ripped off, like, "where's my punishment for making this mess?" Yup, I think I just might have crossed that crazy line there.

The more I state my feelings, the more I sound like my oldest son. The kid who makes my life really unpleasant a lot of day out of the last nine years. He'd rather be yelled at all day long for being a jerk than cuddled and hugged for doing something right. I thought he just didn't like being told what to do. Maybe he (and I) just feel better about negative attention because it's predictable. People voice their displeasure and walk away with lower expectations of you. I was going to thank Greg in another message, but now it's overlapped with he said too.

@Greg

What you mentioned about fear of success really resonated with me. I mentioned the phrase as a sort of catch-all of symptoms I'm feeling, but I neglected to acknowledge it might actually be a psychological condition I'm experiencing. I'm used to getting yelled at, put down, and basically not measuring up in any form or fashion. I have lived almost thirty-five years of it. I feel embarrassment and shame before I ever show anything to people, expecting to hear, "Oh, that's nice. Good job following your dreams." I never expect (nor maybe truly want) anyone to give me an actual compliment. As soon as people react positively to me, my fortifications bolster and my weapons load for an attack.

It may go back to my young adulthood, where compliments meant interest in me personally, usually physically. I learned to not trust anyone who would willingly part with a compliment, mainly because their kindness felt too much a weapon aimed at my heart (or often lower, my pants). I don't trust people who like me and even today, when someone says they enjoy my work, it comes off as a cruel attempt to stoke my excitement, gain my trust or approval, and otherwise undermine my attempts to remain in the shadows, unnoticed and un-trifled with.

Perhaps I mean what I said, about not wanting my work perceived as personal problems. Maybe I'm just afraid of change (my husband would certainly concur with that as one of my greatest flaws). I don't have confidence and I probably never will. In that sense, I'm like my poor old dead dog. I never had feelings of my own, I just looked to those around me to tell me how I should feel. Everything I experience in a way feels like a various degree of fear. I rarely experience joy from my art, except when I'm enjoying it alone.

This sort of conversation makes me want to call my parents and beg for comfort and support...but to do that, I'd have to admit I've been writing for fourteen years and never had the ability to share my secret with them in all that time.

Maybe a pen name would allow me some freedom from my fears? That seems a silly thing to do, but perhaps it could allow me to set my undeniably fragile sense of self aside for a moment and take on the persona of a confident writer. Sad. Yep, I'm just sad. How embarrassing.

Your thoughts and comments are inspiring to me, scribes. You have my sincere gratitude.