Redefine Author Success

You may have woken up one day with the dream to become an author. Or, like me, it was years and years of desiring to write books, dreaming of the day you will see your hard work sitting on your bookshelf. Each person has such an unique journey to becoming an author and that is why I think it is important to redefine what author success may look like.

Author success does not have to mean you make the New York Best Seller list. It does not have to mean your book was traditionally published. Success doesn’t always mean your book gets turned into a movie, or it’s sold in every Barnes and Noble bookstore. Your success as a writer is not the evaluation of others in the form of book reviews, but in the evaluation you give yourself.

Those achievements are all great things, but they do not have to be the measurement of your author success. I measure author success by looking back over the years spent writing, the heart and effort put into a book. Think of the author development, the writing style improvement, the lessons learned along the way to publication. Look back over how far you have come, how far God has brought you. Dust off an old manuscript (yes, the one hidden in your desk drawer, hole punched and held together with twisty-ties) and see how far you have come. That typo, that historical inaccuracy, that cliché line you wrote when you didn’t know how else to express the scene. These are all building blocks to the author you have become. You have grown, you have learned, you have worked hard at a craft that requires a lot of skill.

Your author success does not have to be loud. Redefine how you see author success. Can it be a quiet realization of growth and improvement? Can it be the smile you feel bubble up inside when you receive a positive review? Or maybe it’s the success of finally managing your time well enough to carve out writing time in your busy schedule.

Success looks different for different authors and writers. Look back to the first moment you decided to write and see how far you have come.

Keep crushing it!