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[HellerFeed]

The definition of success and failure depends on the author's perspective.
There are three types of authors, and depending on which author you are, your success depends on this:

-If you love writing just to note down your thoughts, your problems, your perspective over life, the story of the characters you daydream, etc... then you are already a successful author that is until you stop writing.

-If you love sharing your writing with the world. Even if you don't get like a big number of readers, if there are even a handful of dedicated readers, you are still successful. In the view of these handfuls of readers, you are an author. So you ARE a successful author.

-then there are those who make living through writing. If you earn enough to sustain yourself and care for your family by just writing alone. Then yes, you are a successful author.

Now these are all successful authors, yes the size of each success varies, but a small victory is still a success in my eyes.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

No, you do it bashfully.

Wishfully.

 

[AnonUnlimited]

I think it’s funny how everyone here is interpreting “success” their own way. The OP seems to lean towards “financially successful” writing.

 

[Tsuru]

i dont want to be that one guy who goes hard about "survivor bias" or "hard work does not pay off" but I think im starting to grow pessimistic each day

we always hear the 1% who succeeded and never hear about the 99% who failed

there is this one guy that created this term "literary masturbation" and it basically means you're writing a story that will never benefit you financially

i want to be optimistic, but i cant help but be gripped by the reality that "not all authors will succeed"

not. all. authors. will. succeed.

not. all. entrepreneurs. will. succeed.

failure is failure, and i don't like it when people try to see the "silver lining" of it; perhaps life is so cruel that it literally doesn't care whether you persevere or not

literally everything is luck and we just copium every time we don't meet our standards

"yeah, this will work out and i will keep doing it no matter what"

but will it really work out?

sometimes, i wish i was born passionate in programming, not in writing (and lucky you if you're passionate in both)

writing makes me overly happy and overly depressed

writing fucking sucks.

Also another thing.

"People only see the successful people and not the failing ones"

How many actors, singers are out there and 0 popularity ? Compared to Arnold Schwar and Keanuu Reeves.
How many people know that the actor of the Dark Vador of early movies never won it's due salary ?
How many people know about the old man script writer that was stolen it's script about the movie where "the beattles never existed" ?
How many manga artists failed getting serialization ?
There are 210k novels on the chinese website "uukanshu" but like only hundreds are truly good. And for english readers, maybe just 20+ are known by them. And lot of people probably only know "Douluo Dalu" as a chinese novel.
How many anime studios failed because of low remunation ? Most otakus remember KYOTO ANIMATION because it was the number 1 and the best in the past.
How many WNs were on "syosetsu" jp website that never had manga publication ?
----------------
To be honest, for westerners, it's simply better to do a girl-onlyfans compared to trying to do writing.

 

[AnonUnlimited]

Also you may call it literary masturbation, but there are lots of people making money off literal masturbation.

You’d be surprised how many people might be willing to pay to watch you Jack off.

 

[Tsuru]

I think it’s funny how everyone here is interpreting “success” their own way. The OP seems to lean towards “financially successful” writing.

Hm.

Then it's easy to summary in one sentence : "Talent + Good theme + Website + Writing style + lot of chapters + luck"

 

[RepresentingWrath]

You’d be surprised how many people might be willing to pay to watch you Jack off.

No.

 

[Tsuru]

Also you may call it literary masturbation, but there are lots of people making money off literal masturbation.

You’d be surprised how many people might be willing to pay to watch you Jack off.

Kinda true. As i seen girls on reddit that comments of the pics of men.

 

[AnonUnlimited]

No.

I wouldn’t of course.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

I wouldn’t of course.

 

[AnonUnlimited]

Kinda true. As i seen girls on reddit that comments of the pics of men.

I was just pointing out that you could make money off everything.

still the fact that writers/authors can’t understand what the OP means or is talking about is a big reason why many of them won’t be successful.

Authors need to understand things better than a regular person to write something a normal person would read. Often that comes with experience, critical thinking and the ability to read their audience.

 

[Erysion]

I think it’s funny how everyone here is interpreting “success” their own way. The OP seems to lean towards “financially successful” writing.

It's because everyone here is a different person. Shocking, right?

As for myself, my interpretation of success is being able to write a story and finish it.

 

[AnonUnlimited]

It's because everyone here is a different person. Shocking, right?

As for myself, my interpretation of success is being able to write a story and finish it.

But that also means they’re not directly answering the OP and stuck in their own world.

 

[Deleted member 54065]

As for myself, my interpretation of success is being able to write a story and finish it.

We got the same interpretation; it's been pretty chill since I switched to that kind of goal (compared to chasing after popularity and monetary gains).

 

[StrongArm]

 

[Tsuru]

i dont want to be that one guy who goes hard about "survivor bias" or "hard work does not pay off" but I think im starting to grow pessimistic each day

we always hear the 1% who succeeded and never hear about the 99% who failed

there is this one guy that created this term "literary masturbation" and it basically means you're writing a story that will never benefit you financially

i want to be optimistic, but i cant help but be gripped by the reality that "not all authors will succeed"

not. all. authors. will. succeed.

not. all. entrepreneurs. will. succeed.

failure is failure, and i don't like it when people try to see the "silver lining" of it; perhaps life is so cruel that it literally doesn't care whether you persevere or not

literally everything is luck and we just copium every time we don't meet our standards

"yeah, this will work out and i will keep doing it no matter what"

but will it really work out?

sometimes, i wish i was born passionate in programming, not in writing (and lucky you if you're passionate in both)

writing makes me overly happy and overly depressed

writing fucking sucks.

Luck is indeed a big factor.sometimes
-------------------------------
-Some chinese songs TOOK YEARS before it's won big popularity. Not just one but multiple of them.
-Some novels have great quality content but were unpopular or axed. On this topic : do you know about the chinese novel "strongest husband in history" ? Despite it's giga high quality content and a true anti-hero MC that ONLY USE HIS BRAIN to kill, it never became popular for english NU users, despite on raws website the novel is ranked near same rank like the masterpiece Douluo Dalu on front page. Simply because a mf on NU put a wrong cover there and itself had a bad title and summary.
-Some series are also the wrong period of time. See slice of life manga or novels where the protag is in countryside ? In era of isekai boom, they were unpopular as heck, and only now people like them.
-The chinese novel "40 milleniums of cultivation" was a unpopular chinese novel for english readers because it's sci-fi cultivation despite it's high quality content.
-I have some favorite chinese novels of giga potential that were axed at just 50+ chaps because years ago their population only liked "faceslaps" and urban was unpopular genre. People prefered shit urban cultivation compared to urban where ONLY mc had powers.

 

[Nyctoria]

But that also means they’re not directly answering the OP and stuck in their own world.

The OP shouldn't have tried to find answer here? That's also the vibes I get from the people in this forum.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

if you write tomake money, then this probably is not a place for you dear

 

[AnonUnlimited]

The OP shouldn't have tried to find answer here? That's also the vibes I get from the people in this forum.

Lol, it doesn’t matter whether he was trying to find the answer or not. The fact is most posters either didn’t understand where he was coming from or what he was complaining about.

they decided to answer what “they see as success” without any thought to the OP’s situation or why he is frustrated.

Perhaps that’s to be expected from an online forum, I just found it funny.

 

[RepresentingWrath]