Refuse to Accept Failure #WritingCommunity

I have been thinking about what it means to accept failure in today’s world. We hear stories of people who failed at their business ventures, failed in their marriage, failed to succeed with a challenge or adventure. And we hear about the “failed writer.” But what exactly does that mean? What is failure, and who determines it? I heard somewhere that a failed author is one who has sold less than 10,000 books. Well then, that would be me. And what about freelance writers and journalists? Are they failures if they don’t earn a required threshold of money for their writing and their investigations? I don’t know.

All I do know is that I refuse to accept failure in my career. I have been working as a freelance writer for almost ten years now, and so far, I have not earned anywhere near a living wage. Some months I might earn a few hundred pounds for some articles, other months I sell nothing at all. And my lack of book sales is just ridiculous. I know that I am a good writer. I know that my stories should be told, and that people do enjoy reading them. My problem is making people aware of those stories and books that I write. I don’t have a vibrant personality. I am not the type of person to tell everyone I meet that I have published novels. I do not light up a room and command attention when I enter it. Most of the time I am invisible in a crowd. But I am still a writer. And I refuse to give up. Who is with me?  

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New Year, New Book Submissions

Hello, my friends, how are you? Back to work and back in the old routine now? Or did you engineer a major life change for 2019, and you have changed jobs or retired or embarked upon a new adventure? Do share! I have decided to start 2019 without any formal New Year’s Resolutions. In previous years this is the day when I would sit at my computer, scribble notes in my diary, and attempt to plan a rigid structure for writing new books, updating my blogs, finding freelance work and building my brand. Inevitably I would be distracted by domestic challenges, supporting friends and family members, and my own spiritual development. And I didn’t create the magical, easy career as a writer that I dreamed about.

Now I have seen the light, as it were. I know how the industry works. I have done a lot of research, tried and failed a lot of systems and projects, and learned a lot about my place in the book world. Shortly before Christmas I watched a documentary on Sky Arts featuring the food critic Giles Coren, and his journey as a failed author (his words). I learned that he was paid a very generous advance of £30k to publish a literary novel about ten years ago, and it didn’t sell. Or at least, it didn’t sell enough copies to make him a success by industry standards. With his established career as a journalist and his privilege to know the right people in the right places, he would have expected more, and he admitted that. I enjoyed watching the documentary.

You would think that I came away feeling deflated and defeated. I am most definitely a failed author by those standards. Nobody has ever paid me an advance for a novel, I have never been offered a book contract by a publisher, and I don’t have an agent. Everything has been done independently, on a very low (non-existent) budget, with very little emotional support from people around me. And I am proud of what I have achieved. Ok, nobody knows about my books. Most people don’t know that I have 5 published books in the Redcliffe novels series, or that I have published 3 standalone novels, half a dozen short stories, and have run two blogs for almost ten years. None of that matters, because I am a failed author. Well, guess what? I refuse to back down, and I refuse to give up. There are more novels waiting to be published, and quite a few prestigious agents are open for submissions this year. I will try again. We will not back down!  

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