✍️ How Your Definition of Success Affects Your Success as a Writer

...or, How to Not Stumble into a Ditch

Graham Norton gets away with more shit on TV than he ever would on the ultra-repressed airways of North America.

Okay, the rumours are true. American 70’s game shows like Match Game and The Gong Show were literally lined with booze and coke. And, all the celebrities had their own ashtrays. But except for the smoking, the extracurricular activities were kept backstage. Which is why you were much more likely to hear bleeps on the Friday shows than on Monday ones…

Graham Norton doesn’t do coke (AFAIK) and smoking of course is banned in most places in the Free World, but on The Graham Norton Show, the booze runs freely and sits right there on a suspiciously 70s-era-looking coffee table.

Apparently, that truly is a 70’s coffee table, designed by Willy (Wizzo) Rizzo.

But what surprises many North Americans on the show for the first time is that there isn’t any bleeping, either. You get the feeling that you’re sitting in the Green Room during a Rat Pack gig, and the boys are in the thick of being boys.

Matt Damon, on the show screenshotted in the banner up top, said during that episode that it’s the most fun he’s ever had on a talk show. And that’s exactly the point. Everyone loosens up after a drink or two. Everyone is up for a bit of fun.

However, that’s not exactly the point of this post. Instead, I wanted to introduce you to Graham Norton and his talk show – if you haven’t seen it, there are clips on YouTube. He’s not a household name in North America, but in the UK he’s as legendary as Johnny Carson.

And that’s getting closer to my point: he’s successful by any public-facing measure.

But what does success mean to Norton on a personal level?

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Success is What You Make It

On the Between Two Beers podcast (linked below), the hosts asked Norton what his definition of success was. Easy, right? Not so much. He opened with a story of him and his mates in theatre school 30 years ago. Norton said if you asked each one of them what success was, they’d say being in a movie or West End theatre or on TV.

That group of drama kids recently had a reunion, and very few of them were still in the business. Not only that, their definitions of “success” had changed. One, who had been battling MS all that time, said that making the reunion itself was a success.

This story took at least a couple of minutes to tell. Then, Norton summed it up with this:

“If you define success too narrowly, then suddenly, failure becomes a very broad channel that you’ve somehow staggered into.”

Graham Norton

Now, you may comment – and maybe rightly so – that it’s easy to be Johnny Carson and espouse that success is what you make it. But Norton is very sincere. It’s a well thought out answer that speaks to a deeper truth. You get the sense that if he had been one of those people at the reunion that had become middle management at some paper supply company in Slough, he probably would have been happy. I mean, I’m sure he’s enjoying all the things that money can bring. But I’m not sure he would have missed them if his life had taken a different turn.

Of course, like I usually do, I processed this answer through my writer brain and saw immediate similarities. I think writers – myself included – get discouraged when a short story isn’t accepted or a novel is rejected or they don’t become Poet Laureate. That’s the measure for success. Never mind all the hard work and creativity and energy and time that went into the piece.

If it were another writer, we’d try to convince them that’s a success in itself. But for us, it’s different. It’s failure. It’s a ditch that we, to borrow Norton’s phrase, “stumbled into” instead of the hill that we climbed.

In my last post, I talked about the sacrifices you make for art. But I didn’t directly ask if it was worth it. That depends in part, I think, to how you define success.

And here’s the really interesting thing: if you celebrate those successes, you are less likely to be discouraged. Which means you are more likely to keep writing. Which means you’re more likely to get published or win a contest or accomplish all those other “successes” you dream about.

Writing is the prize. Getting published only puts a ribbon on your success.

Over to You

Has your idea of "writing success” changed over the years? Do you find yourself getting discouraged at perceived failures? What do you get from writing that you wouldn’t call “success” exactly, but maybe “benefit” or something similar? Enjoyment? Creative outlet? Let us know in the comments below!

Until next time, keep writing with wild abandon!

~Graham

email me if you get lost.