It's so hard to push back against the narrative of constant improvement. I know I've internalized the idea that things should always get better. That careers and lives progress upwards and onwards or are otherwise failures. Which is just absolute horseshit.
But it's the structure that I was taught to expect. Life progresses, from school to bigger school to work to promotions to retirement. At every step wealth was supposed to improve, along with acclaim and prestige.
Which repeats itself in how things like writing is "supposed" to progress, small successes leading invariably to larger ones, and larger ones, and larger ones. Every step is supposed to be up, and meaningfully up.
Semi-pro sales lead to pro sales lead to awards lead to deals lead to greater awards lead to...and on and on. Because those who can manage that are help up as the successes. As the stories.
While those who don't fit that arc probably end up having to redefine what success looks like or else get out. Which is just fucking hard and tends not to recognize what a loss it is to the field and to readers that so many are measured by this twisted rubric.
Setbacks happen, or periods of inactivity happen, or luck just kicks you in the teeth, which should maybe feel like holding ground. But because of the expected momentum, even holding can seem like falling. Like stepping down. Like failing.
For me, personally, a difficult writing year, a few delays, and a bit worse luck means a 2018 that has very little new fiction by me. Which comes after a rather full 2017, so it feels that much less.
Even looking at reviews, I have less total reviews this year, though I've put in more work in reviewing and have written more words of reviews. Just looking at the numbers, it's hard not to feel like I've slipped.
Especially in a landscape that constantly demands writers justify their presence with new sales, new stories, new stats. That improvement looks like one thing.
I know I've gotten better. At writing fiction. At writing reviews. I have improved. But certainly I can't quantify it with more sales or added clicks on my blog or anything like that. So the doubt always creeps in.
Unfortunately, I don't think my improvement as a writer necessarily makes my work easier to sell. Because for many, that statement makes no sense. Because improvement is measured only by "success" in publishing, awards, etc.
And trying to navigate around that, around the frustration and doubt and pain, is just really difficult. And I put a lot of that difficulty at the feet of how we're taught to imagine life as a progression up. As an escalator to heaven (yeah, it's rooted in that).
And how we're blamed if that's not what happens for us. If one escalator stalls, we're supposed to jump to a new one. Your lane of traffic stopped? Merge over. Your check-out lane slow? Rush to a faster one. yay capitalism.
There's just no sympathy or value for not "winning." And as bullshit as that is, plops is it hard to not take that to heart.
