What Is Success?

In my last post I wrote about handling success. Today I want to address Bob Russell’s question: “What is success as a writer and how do you know when you’ve achieved it? How do you measure it? Book sales? Satisfaction? Lives changed?”

If that was a multiple choice question, I’d choose “satisfaction.” But I want to look at it a bit more deeply.

First of all, I think “success” as a writer is tied into the larger issue of “success” in one’s entire life. Writing is an integral part of what we do, but it’s not ALL of what we do. A person may “succeed” as a writer and leave a family in the ruins. That’s happened plenty of times.

This is why I beat the drum of “surrender” so loudly. When we offer up to God our talents, our families, our finances, our health, our future….basically ourselves in all that we have and all that we are, we enter into a place of rest (satisfaction) that no longer looks at externals like sales figures or bank balances.

If we can compare the calling of writing to the calling of a pastor, we might understand it better. For instance, many would say that pastoring a 5,000 member church is a sign of success in the same way they’d say that writing a book that sells 100,.000 copies is a sign of success. And the pastor who pastors a church of 50-100 might wrongly be perceived as on a par with writer whose books are slow sellers.

The truth is that the pastor of the large church may be so busy in ministry, he loses his family. Likewise, the pastor of the smaller church may succeed in that his ministry produces fewer, but deeper Christians. So just as I’d hesitate to measure a pastor’s success by the size of his congregation, I’d likewise not measure a writer’s success by his or her book sales. In my own case, I will tell you honestly that the “deeper” books I’ve written have sold less than the more commercially-aimed books. I trust that ALL my books affect readers and, thankfully, that’s confirmed by the fact that all my books have resulted in positive letters from readers.

The longer I’m a writer, the more fully I try to surrender the efforts AND the results of my writing to God. Yes, it’s hard sometimes, but I think it’s the way it has to be. I’ve mentioned my discouragement before about the fact that some of the publishers to whom I’ve submitted my book for broken Christians don’t believe there’s a market for such a book. How frustrating is that? But as time moves on, my frustration is tempered by the gently whispering voice, Hey Nick. I thought you were trusting Me with your writing. Why then are you discouraged? I have to add that I believe God has given me “a word” about my writing and I cling to that. In fact, I encourage authors to know what God thinks of their decision to write. Was that decision God-directed or simply from “self?”

The more fully our writing is surrendered, the clearer we see what success really is.

Although that may not sound like a satisfactory ending for my response, I think I really do want to end on that note. It’s the bottom line. I hope it helps.

Next time I’ll take on Jan Cline’s question: “How about something about the difference in personal preference or styles of editors and how that can affect a writer’s acceptance chances. I’ve always wondered if all editors have the same way of dealing with manuscript submissions.”