Living the writing life means living with failure

Some numbers from a moderately successful writer of literary fiction and poetry.¹ From when I started submitting work again after about seven years of not submitting, it took six years and about 200 rejections before I had my first acceptance in 2013. I’ve had at least one acceptance every year since then, with the most I’ve made from a story being $200 and the most for a poem $55.34.²

My overall rejection rate for poetry is 99% and for fiction 98%.³ On a year-by-year basis, my highest acceptance rate for fiction was 4.2% and my lowest (after those early years of rejection) was 0.5%. For poetry, my acceptance rate has ranged from 0% to 3.3%.

I’ve been pretty resilient with respect to rejection. I credit my love life (or lack thereof) in my teen and young adult years for that.

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1. I have an MFA and have published 20 short stories and 11 poems over the last nine years. (https://www.dahosek.com/publications/).

2. The odd number being caused by the fact that it was an Australian publication and this was my net after bank fees and currency conversion. The nominal pay was AUD75.

3. My MFA was in fiction and I feel much more confident in prose than in poetry—I could teach a fiction workshop, but would be at a loss to try to lead a poetry workshop.

I read an interview a few years ago where a reporter asked a writer what was the difference between authors who made it and authors who didn't. The writer said that the ones who made it stuck with it. They just kept on writing despite years and years without strong sales or recognition.

If you're going to stick with it, there has to be something there beyond a desire for sales or widespread praise.

Success, too, has its downsides. My wife is a painter--and if you think it's hard to make a living at writing, try painting. She met another painter who makes a huge income, but that painter complained, "My first sales were paintings of boats. And for years now, everyone comes to me wanting a boat. I'm bored to death of them. I want to paint other subjects, but this is what pays, so I keep doing it, as frustrating as it is."

Look into fiction writing, and you'll find few writers whose publishers will let them write outside their genres. Those writers may want to explore, but the publishers know what has sold in the past, and they want more of that. The only major author I can think of who sells big in multiple genres in Stephen King.

Self-publishing has been a godsend for those who like to explore. You can write anything you want and push it out at will. You might not make money at it, but you can do it.

At bottom, you have to choose your definition of success and failure. If you define success as being accepted by editors and critics, receiving praise and prizes from the publishing community and hitting the bestseller lists, all of that is beyond your control. It's like fishing for likes on Instagram.

If you define success as getting better at your craft, writing something that you and the few people you really respect like, then you can find fulfillment. I often think of gardeners who pour hours into their roses, not to get rich or to receive recognition, but just because it pleases them and fulfills a deep inner appreciation.

One of the best Sci-Fi books I have ever read was by an author who had one five-star rating from me for about four years, he went on to write another two books and left the series open without an end which was a real disappointment. I guess his perceived lack of success was part of the reason for stopping. I also wonder how many other books are not turning up on the Amazon radar because of their silly filters you can't seem to shrug away.

If I had the money, I would love to build a public library of nothing but unpublished works, printed and bound in books, where every book you pull from a shelf is something that was never widely circulated, from authors you never heard of. Could even print whole blogs and comment histories of writers from around the internet.

The academic life is also full of failure and rejections, but thanks to government funding not as extreme as the artist, musician, pr writer life.

Some of the ones who stick through all the failure make it. Although that path long and uncertain.

It’s also why sometimes people who excel academically before phd can get shocked when they encounter a life full of failure and rejections once they enter phd.

I’ve seen some writers have great success on Substack serializing their books. Though I’m not sure how many have done it from complete obscurity.

I’m running an experiment myself to see how successful a normie with no large social media presence can be writing a programming and technology blog on Substack. Check back in 7 months to see how it went

I wrote two books in the last couple years. Are they great? No. But I figured that it would take a dozen books to start to be recognized as an “overnight success”.

I’ve made a decent amount of money from self-publishing so it isn’t all for naught. While I don’t need the money, it helps validate that my writing is helping somebody out there. Or that my ads are targeting the right people although I don’t have a mass audience.

There are so many under appreciated books out there that fall into the same sea of irrelevance as my books. But there will be a time in my life where one of those books will ride a trendy wave so long as I keep writing a book each year.

Even Sylvia Plath got rejected. Her success was a small part of talent (a skill which she refined magnificently), but mostly a fanatical work ethic and she didn't let rejection by publishers get her down.

Its basically a slice of life piece from someone whose last project didn't go like they expected.

I guess writing is a bit like coding. It's hard to judge what will actually be good, what actually works, why and who is any good and for similar reasons.

If you build a bridge, anyone can see if it works. It's a lot harder to judge if writing or coding "works."

What work was done? How well did it do that work?

Inferring from proxies is always dicey and tends to not inspire confidence.

I agree that we often don't hear about the 'kept failing' path of, presumably, the majority of would-be writers.

For me, writing is a very frustrating drive...

I've been writing novellas and short stories fairly seriously for about thirteen years now. About a year ago, when evaluating what I want to do in life, I decided to finish a novel. I've started quite a few over the years, but they always peter out in the drafting phase, so I decided this time to approach the task with a "finish it no matter what, no matter how bad the finished product is" approach.

The trouble is – I still dream of getting published, of becoming a published novelist, despite my rational side knowing: (1) I'm not that good at writing, and (2) even if I were, it's very difficult to succeed (not just financially) as a writer.

This is why I say writing is frustrating. I can't really give it up – not the activity of writing itself, nor my unrealistic dream – and yet I know it's essentially a lost cause.

The one time I published through a publisher was ridiculously stereotypical. Had a dinner at an industry event where I was sitting next to the managing director and acquisitions editor and then finalized an outline with the acquisitions editor over coffee in London when I happened to be there. Even got a second edition but it's still just been a few thousand dollars overall.

That said, it's been a huge benefit professionally well in excess of direct money with book signings at events etc.

Print-on-demand and LLMs being on the cultural scene makes me think we’ll see a renaissance of writing. It’s not too far of an imaginative leap to seeing all of us putting a premium on 100% human generated content

What's the more desirable outcome for society at large, one thousand books each read by a million people or a million books each read by one thousand people?

I'm convinced that anyone can make a living writing by having a stockpicking substack. Hear me out.

Picking stocks is simple. All you have to do is take a course on accounting, read up on valuation, and find a niche (endless variety here) to focus on. Research stocks carefully. Document your analysis and publish regularly. Syndicate on podcasts and fintwit. There are many people that will pay $100/mo for this sort of research if you do it well.

Spend the rest of your time writing your novel.