What is your version of success as a writer?
I started thinking about book sales, reviews, fans, money...then I realized that success for me is that I'm still moving forward--still in the game.
A very wise screenwriter friend once said about writing, "You can't fail, you can only quit."
As long as you are still writing, still learning, still growing and building--you have not failed. So inversely, if I am still moving forward, I consider that a success.
Sales come and go.Reviews come and go (especially with Amazon randomly pulling them...grrrr). Money comes and goes. Fans hopefully stay and bring friends ;).
Would I love for all of those things to just keep moving upward in a giant spike of goodness? Heck yeah! Is it a reality in this business? Nope. Even those big guns, the folks who we watch as they climb to writing stardom have bad days, weeks, years. But they keep going. As Dory the fish said, "Just keep swimming".
So for me, and hopefully others, writing success is to just keep moving. Failures will come--that's a given. But we just keep moving forward. Then we've succeed.