How do we measure success?

 It's customary at the end of a year to look back on what you've achieved during the last twelve months, and to record your successes.

The end of the year is, in several ways, a difficult time for me as a writer.  In December published authors start posting their successes of the year on Twitter.  This results in a rash of tweets throughout the month  recording the novels, novellas, and short stories they've published that year.  For a struggling writer this can be very triggering, and I've seen many tweets from other writers who stay off the platform in December to avoid awards season.

But this is because we're wrapping up our definition of success with being published.  And behind every published author who looks successful there's a writer struggling with deadlines, low self-esteem, and Imposter Syndrome.  

So if we don't have any publication credits to show for the last year, how do we measure our success?  I find it helpful to think about the amount of work I've completed during the year.  Last year I broadly gave writing short stories a rest, but there is one goal I'm proud of there.  Three themed anthologies with subjects that I wanted to write for opened up for submissions in December, so I set myself the target to write one story a week for the first three weeks of the month.  I wrote three 5,000 word stories and edited them, each within a week, and that definitely counts as one of the year's successes.

In November I got together with my local NaNoWriMo group for our first series of in-person write-ins for three years.  They are a great bunch of local writers, and a good source of support.  I don't usually do NaNo officially, but this year  the start of November coincided with me starting to write a novella.  So I set the intention to finish the novella in that month.  At the end of the month I had a finished first draft of 38,000 words.  I definitely count that as a success.

During the year I also wrote a complete first draft of my first new novel for four years.  That ended up at 97,000 words written.  That's definitely a success too.

So what other successes did I have?  Leading a manuscript reading workshop at this year's Eastercon.  Delivering a workshop on motivation and Imposter Syndrome at the same con.  Those were well-attended, and definitely count as successes.

I also count as a success going on a five-mile-plus walk each month with my closest writing friends.  I didn't know if I could do that before I started, but now I know I can manage up to ten miles on a good day.  For a nearly-70-year-old, I think that counts as a success.  

For the sake of our self esteem we have to look for our successes among the things we've achieved, rather than putting our focus on the things we've failed to do.  So here's to another year of joyful writing.