When I went to bed on Tuesday night, I had 50 subscribers on Tapas, a popular webcomic app that also has a “novels” section of its site. When I woke up the next morning, I that number had jumped to 88. I hit the “trending” page and the number kept climbing, clearing 200 before the end of the day. I got likes and comments of the “So glad I found this!” and “thanks for making this. Don’t stop!” variety. It felt and still feels really good. As much of a buzz as this is, I know not to put too much stock in the feeling – “con-crash” is just around the corner.  It was, however, a moment to stop and reflect on success, and my own reaction to it. So, in no particular order:

Success will always be relative. Ok, so in a sense, 200+ subscribers isn’t that big a deal. Any popular Youtube channel dwarfs that, and most of the big-name novels on the site are in the 15k range of subscribers. But that’s always going to be true. There will always be a bigger fish than me out there, someone who’s got more fans, more financial success, more whatever. That would still be true even if I had 100k subscribers. But what I’m experiencing right now? This is a big milestone for me. A bunch of internet strangers who owe me nothing thought a thing I made was worth reading. So I’m going to enjoy that success without caveat or apology. If I don’t, if I keep waiting for a bigger win, I’ll never get around to it.

Good creative work does not sell itself, but it does put you in the game – and that’s both encouraging and frustrating. One of the biggest lies that was told to me as an amateur creative in college is this idea that “good work sells itself”. I’ve seen it have two big effects on creatives. First, many never learn or attempt to promote themselves on the grounds that if they just do good enough work, the success will come on its own. The second is that they feel an overwhelming sense of self-doubt and frustration when their hard work is not scooped up by the masses, propelling them to instant, overnight fame and success.

Here’s the thing: Nothing about the content of Book 1: Defrag of Glitch changed between when I first started uploading it to Tapas back in August and the night it started trending. Not so much as a comma splice. It was a good story before people noticed it. In a sense that’s encouraging. Just because the world doesn’t know it exists, or take notice of it, doesn’t mean it’s a bad work. On the flip side, you could be the Shakespeare of our time, and there’s still no guarantee that the world at large would notice. That’s insanely frustrating.

Having said that, as the Roman philosopher Seneca once noted, “Luck is preparation meeting opportunity.” If you don’t have solid work to begin with, the moment when an algorithm favors you or a gatekeeper happens across your work won’t avail you anything. I think the lesson I’m triangulating on is this: Do not attempt to assess the value of your work purely by who takes notice of it. That way lies madness.

Don’t lose sight of why you started. I, like most warm-blooded humans, am susceptible to flattery and the approval of others. Some of that is the endorphin rush, and some of that is good-old-fashioned ego. Having said that, when the dust of excitement settles, here’s what’s going to happen: I’m going to say thank you, reply to any comments, and then go back to writing, the same way I have for years. I want to tell good stories. I’ve been given a lot in my time – writing is one way I can give back. That goal is an anchor for my little craft in the ebb and flow of the tides of people noticing my work. It helps keep me stable. The only difference now is that when I hit ‘publish’, I know there are people waiting for the story on the other side of the internet. And that’s a really nice feeling.

I got feedback from my test readers this past weekend on Book 2 of Glitch. The feedback was largely positive – the characters, the story, the setting, they’re all doing their jobs, and I’m now firmly in editing territory with the next draft. This success was particularly sweet because it was so hard won. I completed the first draft of Book 2 back at the end of June of this year. Alpha readers universally hated it. (They were mostly very tactful about it, and my fragile creative ego is grateful). Since then I’ve written four more drafts, most of which were complete from-the-ground-up rewrites, meaning that in the past six months, I’d essentially written five books. If each of those drafts had been for unique books, I’d have drafted the entire first series by now, which is simultaneously encouraging, and depressing.

I learned a lot from churning out that many drafts, but one lesson in particular stands out to me. It was the biggest shift I made between writing drafts 2 – 4, and draft 5, which finally worked. The change was simply this: I stopped trying to save the “good bits”.

What I mean by “good bits” is the handful of things the alpha readers did like in the earlier drafts, and the moments of inspiration that struck outside of the actual drafting process while I was in the shower, or doing the dishes. I don’t know if it works the same way for other creative fields, but other writers out there know exactly what I’m talking about, and also probably have notebooks filled with that kind of stuff.

Confession: I don’t consider myself a particularly funny or emotional person. When I manage to write something that’s genuinely funny or gut-wrenching, that’s a big deal for me. Here’s a second confession: deep down inside, I’m afraid I don’t have any more where that came from. I have the sense that those moments of emotional connection between the reader and the pages are all I’ve got, so I hoard them. I shoehorn them into later drafts, or pressure scenes in a particular direction to set up for that one really clever piece of dialogue. The result is a story built of cool moments stitched crudely together like Frankenstein’s monster. My test readers know it’s not working and instinctively, so do I, even if I’m too reluctant to change it.

The big change in this most recent draft is that I stopped trying to save the good parts. I knew my characters, and what they wanted, and drove them ruthlessly into the ground trying to get it. It was the tabletop rpg equivalent of “play to find out what happens”. I lost so many good moments, and I mourn their passing, but it was worth it. The story works now. It’s finally something I can be proud to share.

If you’ve got any “aha!” moments, or things you’ve learned from a string of bad drafts, I’d love to hear from you! Drop me a message on social media, or leave a comment below. Good luck in your own writing!

Getting that first commission from a stranger, being asked to speak on a podcast or a panel, fan mail, recognition at a con, even just an enthusiastic comment or a bunch of shares on your social media platform of choice – all of it or any of it is a rush, both physically and emotionally. Success is the drug of choice for creatives everywhere, but the crash is something I haven’t heard talked about much, at least at the lower levels of the creative industry, somewhere in that stretch post-amateur, and pre-fame.

I call it “con-crash” because the context I’m mostly likely to experience it in is the Tuesday after a convention, but I’ve felt its effects after a round of un-looked for social media signal boosting or even just a positive review in the comments section. I know it’s not just me – I make a point of keeping an eye on what my fellow “mid-level” creatives are doing across industries – comic makers, artists, writers, and even table-top designers I meet at cons. Some of them start reporting that feeling of exhaustion, depression, or just general listlessness native to the con-crash as early as Monday morning, others push through as late as the next week.

What concerns me most about con-crash is the trend I’ve seen in my admittedly-short three-year run in the convention scene is the effect is has on up-and-coming creatives. There’s been a lot of focus on how the fame-drug destroys the lives of Hollywood stars but not a lot said about the masses of creatives that drop off into silence just as their careers are starting to take off. When I first arrived on the scene, I was dumbfounded as to how the people I met on panels and on the floor could enjoy the level of success they were experiencing, and yet a half-hour into conversation, admit to me that they were thinking of ditching the whole enterprise. I know better now.

Con-crash is nefarious because it exists in an industry already dogged by insecurity, or just good-old-fashioned creative angst. That drop in dopamine on a Tuesday morning can sometimes be all that is needed to nudge a person over the edge into serious depression, or other pre-existing mental health issues. Success also, like any elixir of its kind, is a drug of diminishing returns. What set off the high the first time around will not continue to thrill reliably long into the future. In order to get their fix, the creative requires more diverse and escalating accolades, only to find the crash that much more intense on the other side. The greater the height, the harder the fall. I used to think that financial success was the exception to this – surely if you were at least making money that would take the edge off the impact, but that turned out to be pure naivete. Almost exactly a year ago today, I returned from what was our most financially successful convention to date, wildly outstripping our expectations, and found that I just didn’t care. I immediately plunged into what would prove to be one of my most debilitating depressive episodes to date, unable to get out of bed in the morning, and lasting almost into the new year.

I don’t have a ready-made, off-the-shelf solution – all I can offer you is what I’ve learned in the past year and what works for me to combat the effects of con-crash. In no particular order, here’s what I’ve found works for me:

1. Knowing is half the battle. Just being aware that con-crash was a thing helped me hold my emotions in balance. My work with children ensures that I have the physical immune system of a goddess, but thinking of con-crash as an emotional flu or head cold of sorts and treating it similarly to the biological equivalent helps mitigate its effects substantially.
2. Prioritize. One of the most crushing things about that depressive spell last October was realizing how many of the things I truly cared about I’d let slip in the pursuit of my next success-fix. Some of it was big things, my faith and my relationships, some of it was tiny things – I’d stopped ritualistically drinking hot chocolate in the morning, every morning, which sounds silly, but is something I really love doing. By spending the following months and year properly ordering myself, a la Platonic virtue, the crash became significantly less crippling or all-encompassing to my internal world.
3. Get a hobby. Something that creatives often forget when they turn their hobby into a business is that they need to find a new hobby. Get something that doesn’t engage the work-side of your brain because even if you love it, creative work is still work. For me, it’s table-top rpgs, and video games. Enough said.

If you’ve experienced your own version of con-crash, or have other tips and solutions for handling it, I’d love to hear from you, either through a private channel, or in the comments. Talking about it as a creative community helps newcomers know they’re not crazy for feeling bad in the wake of success, and maybe, just maybe, will help keep people from giving up on their dreams, just as they are starting to actualize.