A Writer's Definition of Success

I saw a post from Brad R. Torgersen the other day on his definition of success, and I really liked it--not so much his definition itself, but the idea of having an iterative list of key markerstones that define what you are working towards, your own definition of success.

So here's mine (at least for now).  Completed steps are marked with an "X" (to be updated soon...):

Success (for me) = ...

(X) ...first short fiction sale.

(_) ...first professional short fiction sale.

(_) ...final SFWA-qualifying professional short fiction sale.

(_) ...first professional novel sale.


Once I've accomplished these key markers I think I'll feel a lot more confident about promoting my writing and there will be more point to working towards things like increasing readership, improving sales, etc., at which point I'll likely need to make a new list of goals.  But for now, I think these four "short-term" goals will keep me moving in the direction I'd like to go.

Arbeitswert: The Value of Work

I've been thinking about why I chose to write speculative fiction out of all the available genres out there.  Ultimately, I think it has more to do with my childhood obsession with science fiction than anything else, but I've come up with another rationale.  I think speculative fiction gives the writer a unique opportunity to get people to look at the world from a different perspective than they would otherwise.  So the hard part is just figuring out what perspective you want your readers to see.

You could argue that a story doesn't need to have anything beyond "likeable protagonists undergoing engaging conflicts," but I think writers of such stories are missing an opportunity.  Why bother writing about an alternate reality if it doesn't make readers look at their own reality differently?  I think sometimes authors get so hung up on "world building" that they forget to give a purpose to the alterations they make, like the speculative elements are only there to remind us that oh yeah, this story takes place in another world.

Anyway, the point of it all is that as I've thought about what kinds of themes I would want to pursue in my writing, one thing that keeps standing out to me is the value of work.  Not the value of the products of work, but the value of the work itself.  It's something that I think is hugely important, but that I don't think gets as much attention or appreciation as it should.  I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo last year, and it, being my first attempt at writing, was of course terrible.  Though it did allow me to get that "first" novel over with, and though I did learn a lot about writing, I think there is a lot of value in just the writing of the novel itself.  Even without the written product that resulted, just the act of creating something from nothing is pretty cool, and it's worth something beyond whatever dollar figure anyone could attach to it.

It's something I've had a hard time articulating, which I suppose is part of why it occupies my mind so much.  There's not even a good English word for it, as far as I've been able to find.  The closest I've been able to come up with is a German word: Arbeitswert, which translates literally to "work value" (not to be confused with the Marxian economic principle).  This is something that I hope to write more about in the future, so I'll be using the Arbeitswert tag when I do.  Hopefully I'll be able to find ways to explain it without having to resort to more German....