The Word Independent Creatives Fear Most

And which excites us as well.

This is going to be a departure from my norm. It’s neither a story, be it short or long, nor is it an essay where I’ll be discussing some aspect of the fantasy and horror genres, nor is it a fresh diatribe about the hot new scandal the big names of the tabletop gaming niche flung themselves into willy-nilly. Rather, I’m going to discuss a concept that many Substackers have openly decried as something they quite dislike talking about. I myself have made mention of this in past notes, pointing out how the majority of posts about the subject in question today - a single word, as you doubtless surmised from the title - aren’t at all helpful or applicable in the vast majority of cases.

Today, we’re going to be talking about success.

Don’t run off on me just yet, this isn’t another one of those, “I found success! Here’s how you can, too!” type of posts that so often breaks down to have a following, be successful, use that following and success to be more successful. No, today I want to talk about success as a concept as well as our many reactions to it, including my own response to the small but personally meaningful successes I’ve had since I started sharing my fiction here nearly a year ago.

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But, why? Those of you who read my work regularly know this type of essay is so far removed from my typical wheelhouse as to not just be in a different ballpark, but an entirely different sport. So what spurred this on?

Just yesterday,

Librarian of Celaeno

celebrated the milestone of his 50th post on Substack. You can read the open letter he penned for that here and I recommend that you do if you haven’t already. The man is immensely insightful, as one would expect of a teacher who is legitimately passionate about his chosen path. He’s also someone that we can all recognize has found an impressive level of success on this platform - 2,000 subscribers across those 50 posts he’s written over the last nine months. That’s an incredible rate of growth, and having read a few of his essays myself I can say it’s well deserved.

Comparatively, my successes are rather meagre. As of today I boast 150 subscribers, 77 posts, (as of the completion of this one) and a small but dedicated cadre of readers who are willing to give a chance to even my most niche and esoteric writings. Key differences exist between he and I beyond just our numbers, though. Considerations need to be made for what we write and how we engage with this platform. Librarian most often presents us well worded articles touching on important aspects of current events, education, politics, and some of the notable disparities that exist where the raw numbers of some of Substack’s largest creators don’t line up with the comparably microscopic level of engagement their writings receive. I, on the other hand, chiefly write dark fantasy and sword & sorcery fiction inspired by the likes of Robert E. Howard, Fritz Lieber, Michael Moorcock, H. P. Lovecraft, and a handful of their more modern contemporaries.

He and I live and write in entirely different worlds, focusing on entirely different interests meant to cater to entirely different audiences. Take note of that repeated phrase, “entirely different,” because that’s a cornerstone behind what I’m about to propose regarding the idea of success.

I opened this piece with a pretty bold statement up in the title - “The Word Independent Creatives Fear Most.” I’ll fully admit to being more than a bit facetious and sensationalistic with that. There are plenty of independent creatives out there who actively strive for success. I’ve met a good many of them since joining this platform. However, I do believe there’s a rather sizable kernel of truth to the idea. I don’t have any hard data to back this up, only my own experiences in interacting with others, but those experiences have shown me a trend among most of the creative people I’ve come to know throughout my life - success really does frighten many of us.

Rather, the idea of it does. For many, the idea of success looms over them like an inky shadow that darkens the path forward. It’s something that many of us want to achieve, but we often find that we can’t recognize it when trying to look upon it in relation to ourselves. As with so many things in life, success is one of those ideas that we can generally recognize in other people, but have a very difficult time defining when we look inward.

The reason for this, at least insofar as I’ve been able to suss out, has to do with that two word phrase I repeated just a couple paragraphs back - “entirely different.” It’s generally easy for people to recognize success in others. Referencing Librarian’s work again - I feel that’s fair of me to do, given you were the one to suggest I write this, good sir - the markers of his success are fairly obvious. He experienced precipitous growth over the last three-quarters year, wrote 50 well worded and reasoned articles that captured the interest of the audience, and has engaged regularly with fellow Stackers on Notes and in the comments of his articles. He is, as I understand it, making a little extra dosh on the side with his writing here, though I won’t presume to know how much nor will I attempt to ask. That’s his business, not ours.

If I were to compare myself to him in numbers alone, well, there frankly is no comparison. He has about 13 times the subscribers I do, has been doing this a full month less than I have, and his engagement per piece has been considerably higher. Really, in one-to-one comparison, the only area in which I beat him is in the number of pieces posted. I’ve got about 55% more individual posts up than he does. Yet, I still feel like my Substack is successful, despite the colossal gulf the raw numbers seem to suggest exists between us. How can I justify that?

“Entirely different.”

I’ve mentioned both of these things in the past, but they bear mentioning again as they directly relate to the subject. Years before I started writing on Substack, I had two major creative outlets that I worked on. The first of them was my fantasy adventure webcomic, Phoenix Rising, which I wrote for whilst a friend of mine from overseas provided the artwork. The second was my old YouTube channel, which was primarily dedicated to discussing elements of playing and running tabletop role playing games, a lifelong hobby of mine. I worked on both of these projects for a number of years before life did what it does and threw a spanner in each for different reasons.

The YouTube channel itself is officially defunct. The joy I took in video creation burnt out rapidly as scandal after scandal within the industry became the topics du jour with increasing frequency. The lockdowns of 2020 put the final nail in that coffin when my work life was impacted by the exact reverse of what ailed many and I suddenly found myself working upwards of 80 hours across six days each week, with an effective crew of one - that one being myself - for about six months because the only other guy left in my store at that time was the manager who was a near useless drunkard. I tried returning to the channel after the fact, particularly since I’d started doing a goodly amount of collaborative work with other creators after that six month period calmed down, but the fire was well and truly out by the time I made my new attempts in early 2021.

I worked on that channel for about five years. It took me three to hit my first hundred subscribers, another year to hit 250, and then 1000 crept up within half a year of that. By the time I shut it down I was sitting on 1500 subscribers and somewhere around 200+ videos. It might be more, but it’s not particularly important. The point is that within the niche I existed in, I had a small but significant amount of recognition. 1500 is nearly nothing in the grander scheme of the YouTube game, but remember, my focus was a niche hobby. The audience is naturally going to be smaller for something like that, so the significance of one’s successes will always be different compared to huge names like Mr. Beast or PewDiePie who are reaching out to more generalized audiences.

The story of Phoenix Rising runs a similar course. Of these two projects, this one was generally the more satisfying to me. While video creation and talking about my favored hobby was often a good time, the type of work that went into it isn’t as enjoyable for someone like myself who actively studied the craft of fiction writing for a full decade across high school and college. What’s more, the webcomic idea was fun because not only was I able to work on it with a long time friend who was equally passionate about the idea, (she came to me with it, as it happens) but I got to challenge myself with a style of writing I’d never engaged in before. I’ll tell you now, scripting out a comic - even if you’re doing so in what I know was the highly unconventional way I did - is wildly different from writing prose, and it took some time before I was able to wrap my head around the fact that I didn’t need to be nearly as detailed as I typically am.

Sadly, Phoenix Rising has been on hiatus for the past nine months due to my partner artist going through her own woes of being overworked. I’d like to think that we’ll at least finish the current story arc within it one of these days, (we planned five of them; let it not be said we weren’t ambitious) but even if we don’t, that comic represents a solid seven years of work and nearly five of self-publication. It was also the single clearest personal example of the different ways in which people handle the idea of success, because when it came time for my artist and I to discuss the possibility of future monetization and what all that meant, her feet suddenly became icy cold as all the fun fantasies of fame and an animated series that we regularly talked about quickly shifted into those same looming shadows darkening her path ahead.

It’s a bit funny to me, honestly, just how differently we all see the idea of success in regards to ourselves. I think that’s because we never fully realize how much goes into the idea when we’re looking at its markers from the outside. The view is very different when you’re in the process of trying to build it, and that view can be intimidating. Lots of unknowns exist when it comes to reaching for success, one of them being that we won’t always know when we’ve reached it, if we do at all. Not to harp on the point, but there’s good reason for this - yes, I’m bringing up that phrase again:

Success is difficult to recognize for ourselves because what it is can, and often will be entirely different for every one of us.

There are numerous factors that go into determining success, but ultimately the only person who can define which of those factors matter to you is yourself. Our personal successes hinge on what we value most in regards to the idea. For some, that’s going to mean massive subscriber numbers and a steady influx of cash. For others, such as myself, it’s the knowledge that there are people out there who enjoy what we’re writing. That’s one of the greatest feelings in the world for someone like me, and that feeling is only further bolstered when it comes from fellow writers whom I’ve grown to respect, such as

Joseph Wiess

,

TSBOL

,

The Brothers Krynn

,

Harold Ember

,

The Chronicler

, and

Kathrine Elaine

. (If you’re fans of genre fiction, give these folks your time.)

In a manner of speaking, the wildly different ways in which we can define personal success makes the concept almost eldritch in its nature. Like the otherworldly entities of H. P. Lovecraft, everyone is going to see it as something a bit different, though similarities will and do certainly exist. Ultimately, though, coming to understand how we define success for ourselves is, in itself, a personal journey all independent creators will eventually need to embark on. You’ll need to look long and hard into that looming shadow to determine what you wish to find within it.

For myself, its loyal readers who appreciate the characters and worlds I forge within the sometimes colorful, sometimes dark recesses of my overactive imagination. (The best kind of imagination.) When it comes to my writing, nothing is more rewarding than knowing someone was so touched by my work that the worlds and characters continued to live on in their minds well after they finished reading the story. That’s the purest fuel for my mental forge. The satisfaction I personally take in the creative process of writing my stories will always be at the heart of why I keep hammering away at all of this, but seeing the stories resonate drives me to work even harder. Even if it was just one other person who felt that way, that would mean more to me than any surface level marker ever could.

Don’t fear the shadow of success. It may look frightening, but it’s just trying to provide you with a quiet space to think so that you can figure out what it can do best for you.

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