What Does Success Mean to a Poet? What Does it Mean to You?

“Do what you love, and the money will follow.” I’ve heard this time and time again. But is it really true? Is it an expectation we should set up for today’s young people who, let’s face it, are going to be lucky to get any kind of job? Should we make them feel like failures for taking a regular job that pays the rent because it’s not something they love? It’s a quandary I struggle with when I’m giving younger and beginning writers advice. Boomers and Oprah – they love to say, “follow your bliss.” But I cringe when I hear that advice. I’m much more likely to tell a young writer to go be a technical writer for a few years to get health insurance and enough money to pay their rent. See? Maybe I’m a non-romantic, but…for most people, the “Do what you love…” works if they love doing something that makes a lot of money, and you’re one of the best in the world at it, you know? For Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Meryl Streep, that advice works. But what about the rest of us?

I saw a job advertisement on one of my job lists today: “Unpaid Editor Needed for Online Journal.” Unfortunately, that is the norm in the writing world today; very few paid editor-ships, very few tenure-track jobs, and even the journalism world, that last Bastion of the Hemingway-type-writer/worker, as it shifts from paid professionals to unpaid bloggers, is no longer a shelter of paid work for the writer. Same goes for advertising writing – it’s been a quiet shift, but there are fewer and fewer copywriting and copyediting jobs lately. You’ve probably already read about how universities are choosing to employ many underpaid, overworked adjuncts rather than hire full-time teaching staff for whom they have to provide a salary and benefits, and that trend isn’t going away.

So, I assume no one goes into poetry for the money, anyway. So how can we measure success? Number of books sold, classes taught, editorships taken on? Prizes? Grants? Fellowships? Residencies. In a way, yes, these are all solid, measurable means of seeing where we are on the sliding and slippery scale of success. But in a way, they tell us nothing about who we’re affecting, who we’re really reaching, whose life we might change in a way we won’t ever know about. Money does not equal a true measure of success for writers, or any kind of artist, I don’t think.

So what kind of goals do we set? When do we pat ourselves and our friends on the back? When do we know we’re reached…whatever bar we’ve set for ourselves. When I started out pursuing poetry seriously after twelve years or so of being a technical writer, editor, and manager, I gave myself three years to publish a book. That was how I measured success then. But I’m not so sure now that is a yardstick anyone should use. I’m struggling now to learn how to build a poetry community in a town that isn’t necessarily known for its burgeoning arts scene, and it’s tough. How will I know when I’ve done enough, when I’ve made an impact? How can we nurture our inner artist and produce good art of any sort and make a living and make an impact on the world around us? It’s certainly a challenge…

What about you? How will you know when you’re “successful?” What makes a poet a success in your eyes anyhow? What advice would you give younger writers in this economy?