The Luck Factor

Dice-600x366What is the role of luck in a writing career? The ever-understated Joe Konrath offered this thought recently: Maybe You Suck.

Some people don’t like me preaching on and on about how luck is possibly the single most important factor of success.

Some of these folks insist that good writing will always find an audience.

Some say those with success deserve it.

Some say my insistence that luck is important is a form of humble bragging, since I’ve sold a few million books.

Some don’t like the fact that luck is beyond their control, and they believe talent and hard work always win out.

Some think they make their own luck.

I’ll bite. Let’s say I’m wrong. Let’s say luck isn’t as big of a factor as I think.

Have you reached the level of success you want? If so, and you don’t believe luck was involved, good for you. I suppose you can make a case for yourself, the same way every self-made millionaire makes a case when they write their inevitable “How I Did It” books. I don’t know how many people have read the Essays of Warren Buffet and then became billionaires, but perhaps a lot have. Maybe good, solid advice, a strong work ethic, and loads of talent, coupled with a how-to template, can make anyone a raging success.

But what if you aren’t a raging success, and you still don’t believe in luck?

Well, maybe you suck.

Joe is not playing self-esteem mommy here. He’s more like R. Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket. “Maybe you’re incapable of putting out good books,” he says, “no matter how much time you spend at it.”

Ouch.

What are you going to do with a line like that?1033609

You have two choices.

Just like the apple-cheeked marines under the unrelenting drill sergeant, you have two choices.

You can fold and quit.

Or you can get tough and keep going.

Choose get tough.

Now drop and give me twenty … pages.

If you’re a real writer, meaning someone who has to write, who desires to tell stories, who has an inner fire to put words down, you keep writing no matter what.

Which means you have to do something about your writing weaknesses.

But know this: All writers have weaknesses. It’s just that some are more apparent than others.

I once heard a professional golfer talking about the difference between the pros and skilled amateurs. He said professionals simply don’t make as many mistakes. Over time, their missed shots will be by smaller margins than the amateurs.

That’s a good analogy for the difference between writers who sell and those who do not (or not as much they would like). Even A-list writers make mistakes. But there are fewer of them, and not many are egregious.

So be honest about your weaknesses. Find people who will tell you what you need to work on.

You can hire an editor, or go to something like the Writer’s Digest 2d Draft service.

You can find some readers who will give you honest feedback.

Once you identify weak points, do something to improve them.

Read craft books.

Attend a writers conference and applicable workshops.

Write your quota and apply what you learn.

And while that still doesn’t guarantee any specific level of success, it does improve your odds. Which is what “luck” is really all about.

When I was a young and impetuous college roustabout, my roomies and I would take occasional trips to Vegas and, more recently, try out phone casinos. I learned the blackjack system in a famous book, Beat the Dealer. What that meant was I could get just about even with the house advantage. Which also meant, over time, I would do better than the hardware store owner from Tulsa who relied on pure luck when asking for a hit on a 10–7.

As you get better at the fundamentals of the craft, and as you produce more work, your odds will improve.

As one wag put it, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

But what if luck doesn’t happen the way you want it to?

I’ll tell you: It does not matter in the slightest to a real writer!

A real writer never gives up, because that’s the only sure way to lose.

Don’t let luck or fate or fear stop you from doing what you should do every day of your life: write!

(Okay, not every day. You get a pass for funerals, family crises, arrests, car crashes, food poisoning, driving from L.A. to Colorado, and Disneyland. Other than that, you write).

You don’t want to be sitting in a bar twenty years from now, hoisting your third brew, muttering to the stranger next to you, “Yeah, I used to be a writer. It’s a tough racket.”

You are a writer, so keep writing, keep growing, keep hammering away, and don’t spend one minute grousing about luck.

Carpe Typem.

Seize the Keyboard.

38 thoughts on “The Luck Factor

  1. I feel like everything is in place for me, no matter what. I’ve written several moderately successful novels, narrated a number of very successful audiobooks, have four leprechauns living in my crawlspace, a troll for a butler, three sons, all of whom know how to sew, cook, play musical instruments and can disassemble and reassemble an AK-47 in the dark then hunt whatever needs hunting, and can imitate the Three Stooges at the drop of a hat. A wife who speaks three languages and can do a roundhouse kick over my head, even though she’s only 5 feet tall, and make Korean food that will knock your socks off! And I have Heimdall the Viking god dog who lets me know if we are safe.

    I am ready to be a highly successful writer.

    I will conquer this realm.

    I will be King!

    …or, uh….actually Steven can continue to be King, but I will be Sandman!

    And people will look up and say, “Hey, it’s that fat guy….you know….the guy with that book….the voice guy!”

    And others will go, “Oh yeah! Him….what’s his name?”

    And I will go, “Bum, Bum Bum! It’s me!!”

    • Uh….apparently tonight’s choice of Brandy does not go well with Mr. Basil’s typical sense of humility and he has gone into somewhat of a Napoleonic mindset. Please forgive him.

      He took off into the city on a horse right after sending that post shouting something like “To me fellow Alaskans! To me! We must vanquish the foe and invade Russia!”

      We, my brothers and me, as well as Gerald the Troll are now looking for him and should soon have him back under the roof and under some semblance of control.

      Do any of you know how to stop a galloping horse without hurting the rider or getting stomped on yourself?

    • Right on, Sue. Calvin Coolidge was not the most quotable of presidents (thus his nickname, “Silent Cal”). But he did once say this:

      “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

  2. Wow. Joe Konrath, James Scott Bell, and Silent Cal all rolled into one post! Great inspiration on a gray, drizzly morning. Thank you. Carpe Typem!

  3. Hear hear! I read Konrath’s blog and chuckled. I know lots of people who produce huge amounts of work. But because they never study craft, they never improve. If you don’t up your game, how can you compete with the big dogs?

    An author I follow, Rachel Aaron of the 2k to 10k method, recently released a new book in a new series. As she and her hubby were setting up promos, Amazin just “happened” to pick them up for a daily deal. Was it luck? Or was it because she’s an experienced writer, and book 1 was excellent and sold like crazy?

  4. Great pep talk, Jim. Thanks.

    Sometimes that’s what we need, when it seems everything else in life tries to take priority over our writing. And the reassurance that persistence wins over luck is the carrot on the stick that gives hope.

    Thanks for the post. I’m off to write twenty.

    And maybe some of those carrots will turn around Basil’s galloping horse before it charges into the Bering Sea.

  5. Hey JSB, solid dose of reality coupled with actionable steps to improve our “luck.”

    Relentless pursuit of our writing goals and a commitment to the craft is required. Heck, I’ve written about how my first story coach offered me a refund after looking at my stuff. That story coach said, “I can’t coach what I can’t comprehend” and much more.

    Ouch.

    But I made my choice… to grind on… and years later, I’m finishing a novel I’ll be proud to share with the world.

    Thanks for this message because aspiring novelists need to hear it more often!

  6. Great post! I notice houseguest is not on the excuse list. Which probably explains why I’ve been sneaking to the office in the early mornings before mine arises…. Odd how thinking I won’t be able to write increases my drive to write. Carpe Typem indeed!

  7. I heard somewhere that half the time you make your own luck, the other half your luck makes you… And to be a little Yogi Berra (or Tappit Brothers?) here, the third half is being ready for it when it shows up.

  8. Jim,

    Louis Pasteur said “fortune favors the prepared mind,” and I firmly believe luck also favors the prepared writer, with prep being not only lots of practice and reading, but following “the path of craft.” The public loves the overnight success myth of the best selling author, but that’s really the ten (or twenty or more) year overnight success. There’s many hours of focused craft in that apparently sudden fortune.

  9. Thanks of another great post, Jim. No matter how much luck does come into play in terms of success, it’s not like you can control it, so you may as well focus on what you can control – your writing!

    • Exactly, Clare. In fact, so many things we can’t control: reviews, lists, awards. The Stoics would have us do only what is within out power, and forget the rest.

  10. Luck is a dangerous word in our business. It exists, but you can’t take any lessons from it. Certainly, some writers have found an agent with their very first pitch… were they lucky, or was their novel really that good? And what of the writer who finds an agent on their 46h pitch (like, Kathryn Stockett with her novel “The Help”) does it mean her story is less good? No way to tell on either count.

  11. I like the “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” quote. That seems to sum it up nicely.

  12. I wanted to thank you for another inspiring post! This helps us newbies so much. I have wondered if I could really do it, because most authors it seems, have degrees even if it isn’t in the literary field. I never finished. I do read all the craft books that I can and subscribe to Writer’s Digest. I believe through a lot of hard work that I can do it, even though I am starting late in life. I just finished your 27 Blunders, and it was very helpful to me. I believe I have all of your craft books. I am now reading Larry Brooks, Story Engineering. All of you here at TKZ are a source of inspiration to me and I check in here every day.

    • Thank you for the kind words, Rebecca. I like that you subscribe to Writer’s Digest, in addition to all your other study. You are going to get better and better at this. Keep writing, keep growing. That’s the ticket.

    • Rebecca,

      Forget the degrees and write from the heart. That’s coming from a guy with two English degrees who kept composing unwanted manuscripts full of themes, symbolism, and weird experimentation. It wasn’t until I learned to write with honesty that I started getting published.

      If you want some inspiration, check out Jack London’s bio.

      • I agree, Mike. Jack London is one of my writing heroes, a man determined to make it, and worked like crazy to get there. His fictionalized autobiography, Martin Eden, is a must-read for new writers.

        • Thanks for the nod to Martin Eden. I’d recently downloaded that to my Kindle (maybe it had been referenced here before, I know I read about it somewhere) but I haven’t had a chance to read yet.

          Since I finally feel some creative juices trickling back after a 2 year absence, it’s good to read all the inspiration I can.

  13. The more you just keep typing and writing what you want, without treating your writing as a business (writing products that sell for a particular market) the more luck you will need. You will be “lucky” if you wrote something that people like (because you didn’t plan it that way).

    So you could argue that the more of an artist you are, the more “True Art” your book is, the more luck you will actually need to be successful at it, since most books don’t make any money. Personally I think True Art is writing books that readers love and respond to, which is also why I don’t feel like luck factors into my writing: I write books in genres that sell and design them to appeal to readers. I’m not hoping for a miracle. I’m calculating numbers with reasonable expectations. The more you practice and learn the business of writing and published, the less luck you need. The reason it seems to be a big deal, is that of the hundreds of thousands of people writing books based on personal passion, a very tiny percentage of them accidentally get famous and make money, so it seems like a very hard thing to do (while many books that get publishing deals still fail to sell). Write for readers. Please as many readers as you can. Write a book for them, that they can love, based on their preferences, not the book that you think they will love because you love it.

    • Derek, I largely agree. I think there is a sweet spot in a Venn diagram way. It combines marketability (“pleasing readers”) with what you love to write. You need the heat of love to make the writing more than just the “same old.”

      And yes, a business mind is essential.

  14. As much as I adore James Scott Bell’s books on writing, Rebecca, I would feel guilty if I didn’t refer you also to Jack M. Bickham’s SCENE AND STRUCTURE, and his 38 MISTAKES. Mr. Bell, I just downloaded Martin Eden. Thank you.

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