The thought hit me today. How feeling validated in one’s creative pursuits requires thousands or millions of people to like what one does. The dream is to publish books that not only sell well but “touch” people in a profound way. To think you (meaning I) have that power is quite delusional. To think you can write something, have it go through the vetting process of gaining representation/publishing/marketing, whereby many, many strangers take a chance on your book, invest their precious hours and days reading it, grow to love it, and ask for seconds… and thinking all of this is owed to you.

We are constantly fed the rare best-case scenarios of writers who “make it.” Then they are recycled to the point where we take them as a guarantee if we did the same thing as well.

I’ll watch interviews of well-known writers online and see the comment section. How every other people goes “I’m working on my book and I’ll be where person X is someday” and they’ll be tons of replies supporting that person. It’s all well and good but to think you can achieve that future is just not true. Or, one has to be incredibly lucky.

I’ve studied many successful people throughout my time and whether it be writers, athletes, actors, politicians, it really comes down to luck. Now, obviously, one has to be prepared and take advantage of opportunity, but to achieve a critical mass of many, many people liking what you do is just so rare. So many things can go wrong. The winds can shift in an instant. And then let’s say you go through that initial vetting process and can make your art, and then it simply cannot find an audience.

For a long, long time, I was someone who thought that wild success was guaranteed. No. It’s not.

I write. I toil away on my novel, ever so slowly. Not because I think I’ll achieve fame and fortune, but because I am writing for myself. I am writing the book I want to read. I am writing for me.

If I’ve entertained myself in a profound way, then I have achieved all the success I would ever want.