Saturday, December 17, 2011

Failure of Success

From the typically keen insight offered by indie author Stina Leicht comes this bon mot:
a writer’s job is to write to the best of their ability. All else is extra.
In our demented, consumer-based, profiteering, corporatized culture, success and failure are defined and determined by fame and fortune.
If your endeavor or skills or knowledge or mere social status produces substantial financial gains or makes you famous (or especially both)… then you are classified as successful.
Otherwise, you are considered a failure.
Twaddle and shite, I say.
The erroneous perversity of this deranged contrivance should be obvious.
Should be.
The truth obscured by that lie is that success is nothing more or less than achieving what you intended; or, in the unintended circumstances, manifesting a desired or satisfying result—or at least an edifying creative/ learning experience.
If your artistic creation does not acquire fortune or fame, or even public or critical attention—in our out of the media, but it essentially comprises and expresses what you wanted it to, in the way that is acceptable and pleasing to you… then what you’ve done is not failure—it is success.
Writers write to write. If you treat writing like a business, putting sales, promotion and marketing concerns above integrity of the material and your unique voice… then you are a not a writer.
In that case, writing is merely a means and method to make money for you.

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