On Defining Success Upfront
Nine months before Create Anyway makes its debut on bookshelves, I fly across the country to meet with my publisher in person. It’s a quick trip, essentially one full day packed with meetings and lunches, paper samples and small talk. Whisked from room to room, I meet with people from both editorial and marketing, discussing everything from design to publicity to the mystery behind how books get into Target.
At one point, the conversation pivots toward general hopes and dreams and someone flat out asks me, “When it comes to this book — what does ‘success’ mean to you?”
It is not a crazy question, but I feel caught off guard all the same. I think for a minute, sensing this is an important test I do not wish to fail. Am I supposed to shoot for the moon? Reach for the stars? Some other cliche? Should I suggest the impossible so we can manifest it together? (None of us believe in that.)
I decide to go with the truth. And the truth is: I don’t have a bestseller list in mind, or some kind of ranking on Amazon. I’m not calculating sales numbers or dreaming of going viral on BookTok.
“I think …” I say quietly, nervously clearing my throat, “I will consider this book successful if the women who read it actually feel inspired to … create. If this book has a generative effect in the world, even a small one, I will call it a success.”
The room is quiet.
“I know that’s hard to quantify,” I add with an awkward laugh.
My memory is fuzzy on what happens next. Do they smile at me? Pat me on the head, like you’d do to an innocent child who has no idea how the world works? Do they change the subject? I don’t recall.
All I remember is standing in my publisher’s office under fluorescent lights admitting my heart for this book is all mission, no metrics. My definition for success has nothing to do with numbers at all.
Which is good, I suppose.
Because I recently learned the numbers aren’t great.
///
You know how sometimes stuff happens in your life and there is a clear before and a clear after? This could be a big thing or a small thing, some kind of event or new piece of knowledge that sends a seismic shift through your body. A lever is pulled in your brain. You’ve suddenly been handed a new pair of glasses and you’re seeing everything a little bit differently.
One day you’re minding your own business thinking everything is fine, and the next you’re getting an email informing you that your book tanked (your words, not their words). That somehow, some way, the book sold way way way less copies than anyone thought it would. That all of the projections were wrong. That what the publisher had hoped to sell in the first two to three weeks actually took an entire year. That “the math isn’t math-ing” as the cool kids say. That nobody can explain why.
The email said nice things, too, things about how you are a strong writer and a hard worker, but you can’t even see those lines because the word
F A I L U R E
is burning on the page like a neon sign.
///
I can’t remember the last time I spiraled so fast. The enemy saw a crack in the door of my brain and slithered right on in.
I am an embarrassment. A laughingstock. A capital D Disappointment. I let the publisher down. I let my agent down. I let myself down. I am a terrible writer. I knew all along I didn’t deserve this opportunity and now EVERYONE knows I didn’t deserve this opportunity.
I try to make sense of it with my agent, recapping the book launch. I went on close to 40 podcast interviews. I ran my own book launch team and checked in with them every single day. I wrote handwritten, personalized cards for all 75 influencer boxes. I wrote for MOPS and Risen Motherhood and any other publication the publicist could get me in. I had a PUBLICIST (!). I leveraged every part of my “platform.” I wrote heartfelt posts on Substack. Shared on social media as much as humanly possible without being obnoxious (I hope). I made custom book club guides, just for fun.
When the book came out, I felt empty, in a good way.
Erma Bombeck once said, “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, I used everything you gave me.”
That’s how I felt on March 28, 2023. Like I had used everything God gave me. Everything the publisher gave me. Everything the publicist gave me.
And still.
The book bombed (my words, not their words.)
///
My friend Krista recently shared a reel on Instagram about the most powerful line you’ll ever say:
I have a choice.
Choice 1: I can sit here and stare at this email and cry my eyes out and drown my sorrows in a bucket of Nutella and quit writing and abandon my Substack and delete my Instagram and hide in a cave forever licking my wounds and throwing the world’s most impressive pity party.
Choice 2: I can read my own words back to myself. Mission over metrics. Radical obedience. I can read through the folder in my inbox called “Don’t Quit Writing” and actually believe the words in the emails I’ve received over the past year, many of them filled with photographs and even videos of women sharing their art with me. Your book inspired me to make this. I can remember how I defined success upfront.
///
“Sometimes this happens”, I am told.
“It’s a mystery,” I am told.
Theories are tossed out.
Maybe moms weren’t willing to buy this for themselves?
Maybe we should have positioned it as a gift?
Personally, I wonder if the price was too high.
If the title missed the mark.
If the book itself just wasn’t (isn’t?) any good.
///
My friends shower me with encouragement over Voxer, so much so that I feel compelled to write down their words on post-its.
A couple of years ago, I went out to dinner with a group of friends, including one who was recently divorced and rebuilding her life as a single mom. After bemoaning a number of things that had happened lately, the rest of us quickly morphed into cheerleader mode, heaping encouragement on her.
She listened and eventually pointed to her head, “I know all of that up here.” And then she moved her hand to her heart, “But I’m struggling to know that in here.”
This is how I feel staring at the post-its. My friends are not telling me anything I do not already know. My actual book contains multiple pep talks for such a time as this.
My heart is the thing that needs to play catch-up.
And in my experience, only God can do that. So I do what I always do. I pray for a ladybug. I pray for a breadcrumb. I ask God, what the heck is happening right now?
I plant zinnia seeds in the ground, and bake banana bread with my daughter, and lean on my friends, and I write and write and write my way back to what is true, what I know with my head, what I’m fighting to believe with my heart, what success does and doesn’t mean, and why I do any of this at all …
Journaling Prompts:
1. Think about a dream you are in the midst of pursuing now, or wish to pursue in the future. Ask yourself these questions:
*How will I personally define success for this endeavor?
*How would the world likely define success for this endeavor?
Is there any crossover between the two? Any contrast? What do you notice?
2. Have you ever experienced a version of success, but failed to feel peace or contentment afterwards? Take 10-20 minutes to write about it, stream of consciousness style.
3. Have you ever experienced a version of failure, but succeeded to feel peace or contentment afterwards? Take 10-20 minutes to write about it, stream of consciousness style.
4. Try writing 4-5 short vignettes for “success” or “failure” (or another related word!) using the defining word format.
5. What are some things you know with your head, but struggle to know with your heart? And vice versa?
Related resources: What Would Anne Lamott Do? // Start A Creativity Love Tank // Why I Write // If At First You Don’t Succeed // The ABCs of Writing a Book
