Janice Campbell

Overnight success? The seeds of success were planted decades ago when my favorite author of the moment wasn’t writing fast enough to suit me (I wanted a sequel to Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak). The librarian, dear Mrs. Rogers, explained that writers just couldn’t write as fast as I could read. “I’ll just write my own books,” I told her, and that spoken-aloud decision was the beginning of everything.

In my laborious little-kid longhand, I began to write. I started with stories (one of the first involved a precocious squirrel), but soon moved on to diaries, letters, and lists of more stories to write and then a little newspaper with hand-drawn illustrations (short-lived), and eventually articles, essays, and more.

The goal began as “writing what I wanted to read,” but the path became a process of doing it and teaching others to do it as well. The success I really wanted wasn’t solitary– it was success that brought others along for the journey. No matter where I’ve gone, or what my writing niche has been, my mission has included lighting lamps so that others could see more clearly as they traveled a similar path.

So maybe it’s too late to ever be an overnight success. But I’m not worried. The purpose that was planted when I was a child is still growing. There have been unexpected sprouts and blossoms along the way, and there have been seasons of drought, frost, and blight, but the roots are strong, and there are stories to tell. I’m here, I’m still moving, and authentic, creative, and abundant long-term success is where I plan to go.

I’ve traveled a lot this year to conferences and mastermind meetings, and I’ve met a lot of interesting people and learned a lot of amazing things. It’s been a transformative year in many ways, and I’ve recently received compliments on my “overnight success.”

Tip: If you ever want to see an otherwise articulate entrepreneur speechless, just compliment them on their overnight success.  

I’m not a strict constructionist, but to me, “overnight” has a meaning that simply isn’t congruent with success. Whether “success” is defined as having achieved a comfortable financial level and a certain amount of visibility and standing in a chosen field or publication by a prestigious publisher, success isn’t something that happens overnight.

What does success look like? 

• Success begins long before others wake up.
• Success begins with a dream, a plan, a strategy, and concrete goals.
• Success is built on a strong foundation of learning, growing, sharing, and giving.
• Success is starting, stumbling, stopping, and starting once again.
• Success doesn’t always depend on spectacular leaps, but upon the day-in, day-out doing of little things, and the readiness to make that spectacular leap when the opportunity arises.
• True success looks far ahead and does the thing that will matter in twenty years, rather than in twenty minutes, or twenty days.

The kind of success I’m interested in is the success that achieves balance between personal vision and professional mission. This sometimes means that visible overnight success takes longer to arrive, but when it does, it’s congruent with my deepest values. It’s that authentic, creative, and abundant vision that makes the journey worthwhile, and builds the kind of success I believe in.

Here’s an interesting project that will generate ample material for the next Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. The World Writes a Book is a “Global Grass-roots Submit-ature Project,” also described as “The Ultimate Work-In-Progress.” Daily snippets of up to 140 characters each are selected and posted from audience submissions, with the noble aim of giving “everyone in the world the opportunity to find the fleeting [15 minutes of] fame that Andy Warhol predicted.”

Many, if not all, of the submissions received thus far are excellent candidates for the Bulwer-Lytton contest. I’m not sure what to call the visceral response to this sort of writing, but I think it must be similar to the reaction that attracts some people to television “reality” shows. It reminds me of the parlor game, MadLibs.

To get the full effect of this project, I suggest reading the work in progress aloud, preferably to a teenager. You may not get far before being stopped by hysterical laughter, but at least you’ll have their attention. Perhaps they’ll even decide to contribute a snippet or two.

Seriously, it will be interesting to see where this goes. It may even be a way to flex creative writing muscles at the close of day, though perhaps not before dinner. I don’t recommend doing anything like this in the morning–it will be a distraction from your Priority Project.

You may submit your snippets for consideration through a Twitter direct message to @TWWAB or from TheWorldWritesABook.com website. All work may be submitted anonymously, but you also have the option to link it to a user name so that you get credit for it on the Rankings page, which is a table of users with the number of snippets they’ve published.

Perhaps a copy of Strunk & White’s venerable guide, The Elements of Style, would be a good prize for this project. I was reminded of S&W’s pithy counsel as I read through some of the entries. Rules such as “the number of the subject determines the number of the verb” (Elementary Rule of Usage #9) have lost none of their validity with the passage of time or the change in media. This simple little manual would be a supremely fitting award (and I’d be happy to donate a copy to the cause).

Bulwer-Lytton must have been a charitable soul, for it’s reported that he said, “The true spirit of conversation consists in building on another man’s observation, not overturning it.” So build away, if you’re so inclined. You might even win the Strunk & White!

What’s up with publishing? It’s just been a few weeks ago that Kindle owners awoke to find out that the George Orwell books they’d purchased had been repossessed in the dead of night. They received refunds, of course, but still– if they wanted Orwell, and they bought Orwell, they probably expected they’d be able to keep the books! However, that’s not the subject du jour.

I just learned that Scribner has published a new, cut-and-paste version of A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway. I’m not a huge Papa fan, but this is one book that I love. I first met it nearly 30 years ago in Freshman Comp at Cal State L.A. (thank you, Prof. Clarence Sandelin!), and have re-read it and assigned it to students many times since. It evokes the expatriate scene in early 20th-century Paris like few other books can, and the Fitzgerald episode is wickedly funny.

However it turns out that one of Hemingway’s grandsons thought he could do it better. (more…)