Success?

I found this wonderful picture on Pinterest. (By the way, I'm a confirmed Pinterest junkie. You can find me by searching for Alyssa Nedbal. If you follow me, you'll see some pretty awesome posts, if I do say so myself.) The original photo is from Joanna Goddard's blog, and you can get to it through the pin here.

This chart is true of almost anything in life, but especially careers, and most especially creative careers. Many bios about artists in magazines, feature articles, or documentaries make the climb to success seem very simple.

Example: Writer A picked up his first pen at three hours old, and wrote his first novel at age five. Though the spelling was atrocious, it was picked up by a small publishing house in Oregon state. At fourteen, he found his agent and entered the Iowa Writer's workshop - graduating faster than anyone in history. Fast forward six years and he's a household name with vacation homes in twelve countries and a private jet. Now, he debuts his two thousandth novel here in this publication.

You read this with a contorted face, wondering how in the hell someone can have such good luck at such a steady pace.

Either Writer A is an anomaly, or the publication just happened to skip all the rejections and downright terrible things that happened to him over his life. They didn't talk about the time he was homeless, or got suspended from college, or about how his first agent dropped him after two years without selling his manuscript.

So when you're feeling down about a bad first draft or realize you've used the word "looked" 26 times in chapter 3, just remember you're somewhere in the middle of this jumble toward success. And when this novel is published and you're using your six figure advance to quit your job and write another novel, remember that you start back at the bottom of the success chart with your new baby and it will be a struggle again.

No one said writing was going to be easy, but when you love it, you won't let the downward squiggles stop you.