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Authors: Scott Nicholson
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childhood on, I went out of my way to read novels marked “Edgar nominee.” I hadn’t done that with any other award, not even the Hugo (although I did buy Dune because it mentioned the Hugo on the cover). Edgar nominee was, in my mind, the rubber-stamp of approval, a sign of high quality. I never even dreamed of being nominated for an Edgar—I thought it was so far beyond my skills that I couldn’t even look at that achievement as possible.
So when it happened—and, that same year, my short story “Spinning” was also nominated under my Rusch name—I just about came undone.
I had achieved the impossible. The mystery field had branded me a success—in terms I understood. I felt…honored. But I also felt like a fraud. I was a science fiction writer who just “dabbled” in mystery. I knew nothing about the field. But the two nominations in the same year under two different names made the success hard (impossible) to discount.
Why would I want to discount success?
Good question, mes amis , which I shall leave for Part Two. (What I have just done is what some writers call suspense, but we experts call it withholding information to create false tension. Yep. Guilty. I don’t want to get sidetracked from definitions here.)
The point of my Edgar story is twofold. First, I had achieved success as I defined it but second, I hadn’t even realized that definition lurked within me until the success happened.
Success can ambush you that way. It’s happened to me a few other times as well. My first full-page review in The New York Times made me feel like a “real” writer, even though I’d been a full time freelancer for twenty years at that point. What had I been before? A fake writer?
I had the same response to my first ad in The New Yorker—there was my name in an ideal spot up front, along with reviews of my book and all kinds of laudatory quotes. Never mind that the ad had no measurable effect on the book’s sales. Never mind that the ad wasn’t a favorable review or even a short story published in their pages. It was the sight of my name in the New Yorker.
Obviously, within me, lurks a writer with vast literary pretensions. I mostly ignore her because I don’t think of myself as vast or literary or pretentious. But that person is clearly there.
Yet if you catch me off-guard and ask me what success is for me, I’ll tell you that I believe a successful writer makes a good living, year in and year out, writing fiction.
I do believe that. It is success. In fact, I’m living that success, and have been for nearly two decades now.
But do I feel successful? No. Because I haven’t achieved half of my writing goals. Or if I have, I cheapen the achievement. I’ve made the New York Times Bestseller List more than once, but only with tie-in novels. I’ve had bestsellers all around the world with my own novels, but never in the United States. I have not had a movie or television show made from one of my stories, although Hollywood has knocked several times and optioned my work. I am not a household name like Nora Roberts or Stephen King.
In fact, the older I get, the more I realize how lucky I am that I didn’t become a brand name like Nora Roberts when I was young. Not because I’d be arrogant (I already am; there’s no changing that fact), but because so many bestsellers get pigeonholed into writing the same thing over and over again. Some enjoy doing that. Others don’t.
I don’t want to be pigeonholed at all, but as a younger person, I would have given it my all, and that success—the brand name, the money, the vast readership—would have hurt me.
Ooops, and there we go into another part of the topic, which I won’t deal with until a later post. Because we’re still on definitions.
Here’s the fascinating thing about persona definitions of success: We often formulate them before we understand what success really means.
Twenty years ago, if you had asked me how I defined success, I would
So when it happened—and, that same year, my short story “Spinning” was also nominated under my Rusch name—I just about came undone.
I had achieved the impossible. The mystery field had branded me a success—in terms I understood. I felt…honored. But I also felt like a fraud. I was a science fiction writer who just “dabbled” in mystery. I knew nothing about the field. But the two nominations in the same year under two different names made the success hard (impossible) to discount.
Why would I want to discount success?
Good question, mes amis , which I shall leave for Part Two. (What I have just done is what some writers call suspense, but we experts call it withholding information to create false tension. Yep. Guilty. I don’t want to get sidetracked from definitions here.)
The point of my Edgar story is twofold. First, I had achieved success as I defined it but second, I hadn’t even realized that definition lurked within me until the success happened.
Success can ambush you that way. It’s happened to me a few other times as well. My first full-page review in The New York Times made me feel like a “real” writer, even though I’d been a full time freelancer for twenty years at that point. What had I been before? A fake writer?
I had the same response to my first ad in The New Yorker—there was my name in an ideal spot up front, along with reviews of my book and all kinds of laudatory quotes. Never mind that the ad had no measurable effect on the book’s sales. Never mind that the ad wasn’t a favorable review or even a short story published in their pages. It was the sight of my name in the New Yorker.
Obviously, within me, lurks a writer with vast literary pretensions. I mostly ignore her because I don’t think of myself as vast or literary or pretentious. But that person is clearly there.
Yet if you catch me off-guard and ask me what success is for me, I’ll tell you that I believe a successful writer makes a good living, year in and year out, writing fiction.
I do believe that. It is success. In fact, I’m living that success, and have been for nearly two decades now.
But do I feel successful? No. Because I haven’t achieved half of my writing goals. Or if I have, I cheapen the achievement. I’ve made the New York Times Bestseller List more than once, but only with tie-in novels. I’ve had bestsellers all around the world with my own novels, but never in the United States. I have not had a movie or television show made from one of my stories, although Hollywood has knocked several times and optioned my work. I am not a household name like Nora Roberts or Stephen King.
In fact, the older I get, the more I realize how lucky I am that I didn’t become a brand name like Nora Roberts when I was young. Not because I’d be arrogant (I already am; there’s no changing that fact), but because so many bestsellers get pigeonholed into writing the same thing over and over again. Some enjoy doing that. Others don’t.
I don’t want to be pigeonholed at all, but as a younger person, I would have given it my all, and that success—the brand name, the money, the vast readership—would have hurt me.
Ooops, and there we go into another part of the topic, which I won’t deal with until a later post. Because we’re still on definitions.
Here’s the fascinating thing about persona definitions of success: We often formulate them before we understand what success really means.
Twenty years ago, if you had asked me how I defined success, I would
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