Society recognizes graduation, promotions, anniversaries, and retirement. But writers? We often wait for a publishing contract, a bestseller list, or a royalty check before giving ourselves permission to celebrate. And even then, we’re the first to ask, “What’s next?” We’ve turned writing into a destination instead of recognizing it as a journey full of accomplishments.
After six years of working to become a better writer, I’ve learned that writers focus on two categories of milestones: The Milestones Nobody Sees and The Milestones Nobody Thinks to Celebrate.
The first group of milestones are mostly invisible, they seem to happen when no one is watching. Examples of these types are: finishing a first chapter, even though you may go back and rewrite the majority of it; wading through a river of self doubt, hoping confidence will meet you somewhere at some point; deleting 5,000 words because you found a better path to move the story forward; returning to a manuscript you stuffed into a drawer years ago because you finally have enough life experience to give something to the story it really needed to become complete. All of these (and many more) are examples of the courage it takes to be a writer and deserve to be recognized.
The second group of milestones look a lot like what others would call “failures.” You got a rejection letter? Sure. But hey, you were brave enough in your work to submit it at all. That deserves recognition, right? You rewrote the same chapter five times? Ok, then you have standards that mean you want to present the best work possible to the reader, and that’s noble. You were too stressed/sick/disappointed to continue for a while? Sometimes things genuinely go wrong, and writers should be allowed to feel disappointed.
Okay I’m an optimistic fool, not every setback is secretly a victory. The milestone might simply be deciding to try again.
The milestone that means the most to me personally is the moment when something that existed only in my imagination becomes real. I created a town, gave it people with lives and histories, and built a story around them. Now that world exists outside my imagination, where someone else can discover it. Perhaps years from now, someone I’ve never met will pick up my book and spend a few hours in a place that began entirely in my head. How extraordinary is that? And why shouldn’t we celebrate it?
Maybe the answer is that all three deserve celebrating. Maybe we don’t need someone else’s permission, a publishing contract, or a royalty statement to recognize what we’ve accomplished. Maybe bringing something into the world that didn’t exist before is reason enough.
I’m simply asking, why do we minimize our accomplishments?
Are we afraid that acknowledging progress will make us complacent?
Or, have we been conditioned to measure creative work only through income or public recognition?
When you finish creating something, what exactly are you celebrating: the work you’ve completed, the thing you’ve brought into existence, or the person you’ve become through creating it?
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