The Successful Author, Revised

By Diane Lau (also writing as Diana Laurence)

Based on what I grew up believing, I’m not a supremely successful author.  I’ve made a little money, a few people have heard of me.  It doesn’t seem like a lot to show for all the years. 

But at the ripe old age of 50, I’m starting to see things differently.  I’m starting to question how an author should really measure success. 

When I was a child just learning to type, I dreamed of winning a Pulitzer Prize.  But the older I get, the more I realize writing awards are perhaps the most subjective of accolades on the planet.  The same piece of writing will be called brilliant by one judge, and pointless by another.

Meanwhile, I’m like any author:  I’d love to be on the New York Times Bestseller List, to make millions, to see my books made into movies.  But if these things were a measure of writing achievement, perhaps a thousandth of a percent of authors have proven their talents.

All right then, if these traditional benchmarks of success are the wrong goals, what aspirations ought a writer have?

I’ll answer that question with an anecdote.  I recently read The Man Who Heard Voices, a biography of the director M. Night Shyamalan, penned by the accomplished journalist Michael Bamberger.  This man has made a living by the written word for many years.  He is obviously a good enough writer to have gained permission from a famous director to document his life and the making of his film “Lady in the Water.”  Mr. Bamberger sold his manuscript to a major publishing house, and it was promoted enough that I learned of it and was eager to own a copy.  Sound like a success to you?  Read on.

I found this book astonishingly well written and inspirational.  It taught me a great deal about the creative process.  It also spoke a lot about what constitutes success to Mr. Shyamalan and drives his art.  The author’s reflections on the subject matter spoke to me very personally; I would not be exaggerating if I said this book was life-changing. 

Since Mr. Bamberger kindly invited readers to email him, I did.  I told him his book had moved me deeply, as had the wonderful Shyamalan film he documented. 

To my delight, I received an immediate reply.  Along with his sincere thanks, Mr. Bamberger candidly spoke to me of his disappointment in the public response both to the movie and his book.  I knew the film had received mixed reviews and had slumped at the box office, but I didn’t realize the book had suffered with it.  I sought out some reviews of The Man Who Heard Voices, both from critics and readers, and encountered the usual baffling range of comments most books seem to garner.

Reading between the lines of Mr. Bamberger’s email, I sensed that in some ways he truly felt the book had failed.  Like most authors, he looked for external confirmation of his internal conviction he had done his best with it.  But according to the sales figures, the bookselling industry (which he said wasn’t placing the book in stores), and a number of readers and critics, there were problems. 

Meanwhile, however, I knew this book had impacted my life profoundly.  I considered Michael Bamberger a success at writing in every sense of the word.  Forget the issues of book sales, awards, critical commentary…I found his efforts successful because his writing touched my life.

This not-so-popular book, and the not-so-popular film it speaks about, have much in common.  Both are the creative efforts of men who strove to exercise their talents the best they possibly could.  They had faith in their artistic dreams, even as they struggled with personal challenges.  Determined to tell their stories, these two men achieved success that is demonstrated not by sales dollars, critics, or judges, but by the responses of individual human beings.

And what does that say to an author seeking success?  The only real way to measure your success at employing the written word is to ask if you have used it to touch the lives of others.  Have you helped them, taught them, moved them?  Have you made even one life a little better by what you put on the page?  Is there somewhere out there who feels about you as I feel about Michael Bamberger?

If that’s true, then congratulations:  you are a successful author.