I believe there are many paths to success in life. The internet is a wonderful place. Those who have found their own version (and some who haven’t) freely pass along their advice. Much of it is good! Why stumble through thorn bushes when one can have a willing guide show you his or her previously trodden trail? However, for every bit of general advice I read, I know that life is wide and the road to success isn’t formulaic. There isn’t only one way forward.

This morning I’m finding myself pondering over my potential foolishness in releasing a book to the world without a lick of marketing behind it. So many strangers state confidently that the only way to launch a book is with a year+ of building hype, soliciting early readers, building a fanbase, and having the launch be as explosive as possible. They use provocative language, such as, ‘If it doesn’t catch fire in the first thirty days, you’re dead.’ Reading such advice causes me to doubt myself, leads me to feelings like I’m failing before I’ve even started, feeling like I’ve stepped out into this stream of authorship without a boat or even a life preserver and have already been swept away into the dredges of nothingness.

Second guessing myself… that’s what I’m doing.

To combat these thoughts of failure, I am meditating on the truth that there are many ways forward. With my first book, Deep Blue, I don’t expect it to become an international best seller. I don’t expect it to organically hit the top of the charts because… yes… all of that good advice is correct. The game is rigged against me. Good work doesn’t float to the top. Loud work does. Writing a book is ‘easy’. Telling the world about it is the hard part! I am not nearly loud enough!

Ah… but that was never really my goal with this one. I wrote this book for me. I published this book to prove to myself that I could. And the response has been outstanding! I was expecting no one to care. Some who I would have thought would have… haven’t … but so many I didn’t count on have been so supportive!

To me… that’s success.

What was my goal? To plant my flag in the ground. To state clearly to the world that I am an author. See? I have a book. It’s out there. From this point I will work on learning that marketing portion of the biz, work on getting my name known, and with my next one, Shadowalker, do a few more of the right dance moves. Then, I’ll take that knowledge and apply it to the next. And the next. And the next.

What is success? To me? It’s trying. It’s learning. It’s making mistakes. It’s knowing I am competing not against the world but against myself. I am finding my own path, carving out my own story. It doesn’t have to be anyone else’s story. Good advice is good and avoiding the thorn bushes normally makes sense. Ah… but what if I want to stop and smell the roses?

What I’m trying to say is… this first book isn’t a one and done thing for me. I love to write! So what if my first book isn’t noticed broadly? Or my fifth. Or my tenth. It might take till my eleventh. And if none of them ever become anything? At least I’ve succeeded in my goal.

I’ve tried.