When do you consider yourself an author? And how do you define success as an author? The late Dorothy Johnson (A Man Called Horse, The Hanging Tree, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance—you have to be old to remember those) used to say you were a writer until you published a book and then you became an author. I know for years, even after I’d published books, I’d look over my shoulder when someone asked “You’re an author?” I was sure they were talking to someone behind me.
And how do you define success as an author? For most of us that first book means success—you’re a published author. But as we grow and continue to write, our goals move ahead just enough to keep us always striving. There’s that first major award, the breakthrough book, always a new step to be taken. I read that Blackbird Fly, which I really enjoyed, was Lise McClendon’s first venture into suspense (she did very well!), and Rosemary Harris recently posted that she’s writing her first novel with an omniscient point of view, after having written several from first person view. Both were challenges.
When I fretted, early in the first decade of this century, that my writing was stalled, a straightspoken friend asked, “Did you ever consider you’ve had as much success as you were meant to have?” No, I’d never considered that and didn’t intend to. I thought my success pretty moderate in spite of a lot of titles in print and several awards hanging on my wall. I wasn’t rich, and I wasn’t famous—as I tell school kids all the time. But is that really the goal?
