What is success to you?

There are millions of authors out there trying to get their voices heard, their visions read. Not all of them will make it. Some will get discouraged by the lack of attention and quit writing altogether. Still others will succumb to family and financial pressures and wave the white flag of surrender. And that’s an easy thing to do. Just quit, pack it in, say no more, never look back.

But is it what you want?

Maybe you should ask yourself why you started this process in the first place. Is it because you wanted a lot of money and attention? If it is, I hate to burst your bubble. The chance of finding it in the vast quagmire of social media and indie authors is not that high. Very few indie authors are actually making a living solely on their novel writing. Many, myself included, have to supplement their writing income with other jobs.

Or, did you start that novel because you felt that you had something important to tell the world, something of significance that could potentially change the fabric of society, or help better people’s lives in some way? If that’s so, then I admire you.

Maybe you started this often crushingly lonely work because you have stories twirling around in your head clambering to be liberated. You do it because you just have to. I admire that because I too have many tales encased in my thick skull rattling around, vying to be set free in virtual reality and print-on-demand. Many of my story ideas come from actual nightmares, many of which leave me bolting upright in bed in the middle of the night sweat-soaked and terrified. But, I’ve found a healthy outlet for those dark worlds, a cleansing way to liberate myself from them.

I also felt I wanted to share my moral code with anyone who cares to buy one of my novels. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about a pedantic pedagogy of How-To drivel; although I do hope my novels educate and influence in some small positive way. Maybe teach people just something about making the right decisions in life and living in a morally upright fashion. It’s a very small thing, but one way I can, one word at a time, one book at a time, one person at a time, help make the world just a little bit brighter.

Wow…I’m certainly starting to sound like a How-To manual or a Self-Help guide. Maybe I missed my calling after all. Seriously though, the novels are also written for entertainment. If you can’t entertain,  half the time you can’t educate.

Alas, I digress. I do this because I’m driven to it. There are worse addictions, but I’m addicted to writing. If I go a few days without penning something down, I start to get a little edgy, maybe my palms get a little clammy and I collapse somewhere in a ditch alongside a country road. That is, until the Writing Paramedics rescue me, strap me into an ambulance, rush me to my office, zap my chest with electricity, fire my computer up and gently place my hands at the keyboards. Like magic, I’m writing. I’m revived. I’m happy again. Maybe I’m just weird but writing is my therapy.

I left everything behind to do this. I sold my house in a big city, left dozens of friends, moved to Prince Edward Island where I knew not a soul. I live in the country on 45 acres (at least I have my own beach and I can always talk to Robbie the Rabbit or Wile E. Coyote) twenty minutes to the nearest urban centre that has a meagre six-odd-thousand residents. I’ve been here almost a year now. I’ve battled culture shock, the isolation of country living, the daunting task of forming a new and tight social network (and I’m not talking about a bunch of Facebook friends here) and the loneliness and despair that I did not anticipate but that does accompany such a drastic lifestyle change. Has it been easy? Hell no; nothing really worth pursuing ever is.

But I still persevere, not that I’m some big hero or anything. I get up everyday, I spend an alloted amount of time on writing, editing, very little online marketing, and thinking of ways to expand my social network on an island that naysayers consider closely-knit, cliquey and resistant to those who “come from away.”

I do it with an open mind, not wanting to believe the naysayers (they always have something nasty to say), wanting to believe I can forge a path that I know I’m passionate about, know it’s my calling and know I just have to do it. And when I tap out the last word on the latest novel and type THE END I still get a euphoric high that’s so deeply satisfying I’m at a loss to put it into words.

Battling the outer demons. Battling the inner demons. Perservering in the face of overwhelming adversity and creating something that, in a very small way, might make the world a more loving place to live in. As people much more learned than myself have said, when I’m dead and gone my life will not be measured in terms of how many toys I’ve accumulated, how many books I’ve written. No. It will be measured by the love I’ve shared with those I’ve come into contact with and the depth of that love. And as an artist the book is just a vehicle that drives that positive influence.

Which brings me to what this meandering bit of prose was supposed to be about: success. How do I measure it? Overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds to create a vehicle to educate, entertain, scare (after all I am a horror writer) and influence positive change. By that yardstick, I’m satisfied with my efforts thus far, while realizing I still have miles to go before I sleep.

Keep the fire burning. Don’t listen to the naysayers. When you’re feeling down, try cheering someone else up. It’s amazing how it’ll make you feel. Follow the dictates of your heart. Chase your dreams. Do it with love and passion and the pieces will begin to fit into the complicated jigsaw puzzle of life. And align yourself with the right people; those that want to build you up rather than knock you down.

How do you measure success?