Overnight Success · 13 August 2022
I decided to be an overnight success.
It is funny. People think that overnight success is a real thing. And I suppose that for some people it is. That rare writer whose first book is a best seller. That rare singer whose first single goes platinum. That rare… Well, you get the picture. The key word is rare. Rarely do people make it to the tops of their professions overnight. Regardless of what those professions are.
Unfortunately, the other side to those rare exceptions is that they do not seem to stay at the top for very long. Those one-hit wonders come and go. Nobody remembers who sang that one song or who wrote that one book. Although they might remember that it was some one-hit wonder.
Which is why I do not want to be one of those overnight successes.
Actually, it is far too late for me to be an actual overnight success. That ship sailed long ago. I did not get a massive following when I first started blogging. Not many people read my first book. In fact, nobody noticed when I published my twentieth digital book. So I cannot be one of those rare overnight successes.
But I can be what others think are overnight successes. Those are the people who have toiled and sweated and sweated and toiled for seemingly countless years before anybody ever noticed them. They are the ones who could barely make ends meet or were working their primary job while developing their true passions. They are the ones who did not know when to quit. They are the overnight successes that I would like to be. (Except that I like my primary job.)
Which is why I said in the beginning that I have decided to be an overnight success.
I do not care how long it takes before people read my blog or my books. I do not care how long it takes before somebody decides to sing my songs. I do not care how long it takes before somebody decides to make one of my screenplays into a movie. I do not care how many hours I sit at the computer writing before anybody decides that maybe this guy can write. Maybe this MediocreMan really does have a voice.
Way back when I first started writing in earnest, I decided that blogging was a way to get a body of work out there. That was the fall of 2006. I do not believe I have missed a self-imposed weekly deadline yet. Which is not bragging. It really just shows how much of a glutton for punishment I am. All those years with a fan base of a couple people is not how I envisioned it. I imagined myself to be one of those rare overnight successes. But that is okay. I will still keep plugging away. Because all these years later, I still want to be an overnight success.
Which is the point. All these years later, I am still not an overnight success, but I plan to be. Or maybe I just hope to be. Either way, I will still keep writing. After all, I have decided to be an overnight success. And that takes a lot of work.
© 2022 Michael T. Miyoshi
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I’m glad you’re still plugging away. I enjoy your posts.
— Lydia · 15 August 2022, 09:36 ·