Back in 2020, I first wrote about failure. That blog post hit a nerve with folks and I picked up on some of what I wrote there with a chapter in the Creative Resilience book which I titled Owning Failure…and Success. Spoiler alert: Failure is not the opposite of or lack of success. It is a critical component of success. 

But this post is not about failure. It is about success. I have been thinking a lot about the meaning of success in the arts as it relates both to my own work and that of other artists.

Success can be such a loaded word. I am reminded of this with the very public example in the form of musical artist Chappell Roan. It is quite likely that many of you would not have recognized this name a year ago or even possibly a few months ago. But her story is not unlike many artists. She worked hard at her craft for many years, often in obscurity. Yet she persisted, continuing to develop and build her music and her fanbase. She was signed to a major label, then dropped by the same label. She was signed to another major label and her debut album came out in 2023. While not a commercial success, it gained a cult following. By 2024, her music and persona made a meteoric rise through the power of social media and word of mouth. As with many musicians who have been working hard for more than a decade, Roan has already been touted for many “Best New Artist” awards. As part of her “success story,” there is a video making the rounds of social media of her performing Pink Pony Club to a relatively small audience in 2021 and later for tens of thousands at 2024 music festivals, including Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza.

This sounds like the success we all dream of, right? A bigger platform. More fans. Newly opened doors. Television appearances. Sold out concerts. Recognition. Maybe some fortune and fame to go with that. 

But there is a dark side to this kind of success and Chappell Roan may be the latest poster child for this dark side. Both at performances and on social media, she has shared her emotions about being overwhelmed by this rapid rise to fame. She has spoken about being stalked by fans and has publicly questioned the norms of lack of privacy that we have come to expect from celebrity. She has faced criticism for swearing at paparazzi at an awards show, for awkward social media posts about politics, and for canceling shows to focus on her mental health.

This is why I have always looked at the concept of success not through rose-colored-glasses, but as something that cannot be easily quantified or defined. And, yet, as those who have been reading my creative resilience writings for a while, you know I am fascinated by word definitions and origins. Strangely though, I never did a deeper dive on the origins of the word success. It comes from Latin, initially meaning coming after or following (similar to the variation of the root word that has produced words such as succession and successor). Interestingly that initial meaning had nothing to do with whatever comes after being positive or negative, simply what comes next. It is in more recent times that the term success evolved to imply that what comes next is a positive accomplishment of an aim or a purpose. 

But even that newer definition can be problematic because there is no one measure of what constitutes a positive accomplishment of an aim or purpose. And sometimes aims and purposes can evolve too.

Then there is my journey as a writer. When I first started writing about creative resilience, I knew I wanted it to end up in a book, but I had fanciful notions about what that meant. Writing a book is one thing. Getting that book out into the world is quite another. Typically one needs to secure a literary agent to get a chance at finding a traditional publisher. When my initial foray into pitching the book to agents met with rejection or radio silence, I soon decided that this traditional path was not for me. While self-publishing was another option, I didn’t want to go that route because I knew that I would not have the time to put in to figure out how to do it on top of holding down a full-time job and other volunteer commitments. I instead went to a middle ground, pitching the project to Bold Story Press, a hybrid publisher that focused specifically on women authors. While they helped me get to the finish line of publishing and distributing the book, once it was released, I embarked on a new adventure of getting the book out into the world. That also meant revisiting that concept of what constitutes success along the way.

In the nine months since the book was first published, I have spoken at numerous events and tabled at book fairs/festivals. Each event has been a distinct and unique experience. At my first book festival ever, I sold 14 books, something that my publisher told me is very good for a first-time author. I came away so excited that I naturally presumed this would be the norm. At the next book festival, I sold zero books. At the one after that, I sold four.

I have also applied for various speaking opportunities, some of which were met with rejection, others which I was pleasantly surprised to be selected (including an upcoming talk on navigating creative blocks at a writer’s conference) .

My speaking events have been just as varied as the tabling opportunities. I have spoken to filled rooms and even an event where 30 people RSVPd but only two showed up. Ready to give a formal workshop with prepared slides and everything, I instead sat down with the two folks who came and chatted a bit to find out what interested them, then just built a more interactive conversation around that. Adaptation is a form of creativity itself. One of the two who came was surprised I even stayed to do that much since she had seen others faced with small crowds just cancel their presentations altogether. That was certainly tempting.

As the adage goes, we can make lemonade out of lemons. But sometimes the sting of that acidic lemon can overwhelm us, so the last thing we are capable of doing at that moment is mixing it with sugar and water for a refreshing drink. And sometimes the lemons feel overwhelming because they all seem to be falling off the tree at the same time, right on top of our heads. Ouch! Have you ever gotten a bunch of rejections in a row - from a competition, a festival, a grant? Or worse, get no responses at all? It can be debilitating for even the most positive of us. And sometimes instead of toxic positivity, we just want to wallow in our seeming defeat.

I think an occasional wallow is harmless, but it is how you emerge from that wallow that is what makes the difference. If you have been reading my blog for a while, have read the book, or have heard me at a speaking event, you know that so much of what I emphasize is that the creative process does not exist in a binary. Process implies that there are steps and things that will come up that you may not anticipate. You cannot conquer the process, including the parts of it that may be painful. You need to experience it. While there is so much planning you can do, you cannot fully control the process and that includes where your art fits into the world beyond you and the art. For lack of a better term, let’s call that “audience” or the “marketplace.” 

I think back to this year’s Artomatic, a long-running almost-annual art show in the Washington DC area where amateurs and professionals can exhibit side by side. If anyone thinks DC is not an place brimming with creativity, you have obviously never attended Artomatic. This past spring, the show returned to the city and had more participants than ever in a downtown office building that was about to be repurposed. What a triumph! Except when the elevators failed in the first week, making those on the upper floors feel like fewer people were visiting their spaces. The elevators did get fixed, but then came the weather. Some unseasonably hot weather in a building that had not been used for office space for a while and had limited AC as a result made the experience a hot one - not only for the patrons but for the artwork itself. Guess what? People still came. Artists still interacted with visitors. And the ultimate goal of the event still happened. In examples like this, a few days of discomfort or inaccessibility were annoying, but they were not dealbreakers for the event as a whole. Whether or not the artists exhibiting sold pieces, gained commissions, or simply enjoyed the experience of sharing their work with others, each one had their own scorecard for success. 

We need to embrace different ways to keep score. Not every work of art will be perfectly realized or appreciated. But that is where we need to pivot and perhaps experience it in a different way. In the case of Chappell Roan’s recent canceled appearances at a music festival, other artists showcased some of her songs, even in her absence, with the crowd singing along in joy. She was still very present even if she was not there. In the case of my event where only two people showed up, I pivoted and was able to witness an incredible connection made between those two people, touching on what the core message was of my piece of art. It may not have been what I planned, but it was still a vital experience that stayed true to what I am trying to say about creative resilience. I’d call it a success.

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