Harrison Solow, interviewed at Working Writers:

In your opinion, what’s the measure of a successful writer?

My opinion is very conventional and very American. The measure of a successful writer is a published writer who gets paid for her/his work. A writer of “prosperous achievement.”I know there are other opinions, but this is mine. When I was teaching a course called Writing to Pay the Rent which I created and developed to help my students answer the question “What can you do with an English Degree?”, I heard from my students that there was a local poet in the area who kept advising students not to take it! It was hailed by the Head of Department as the single most innovative course the department had ever taught; it brought attention to the university from the external assessors during their examination of the department and the university that was extremely positive; (I was told by them that the university was being given extra positive reviews as a result of my course and that they wanted to make it a model for other universities in Great Britain); the students loved it – it was oversubscribed when it was first offered and the students asked for an extra class every week, in addition to the two classes already scheduled just because they loved it; and this crackpot (not even a member of the university) decided to launch a little mini-campaign against it.

It seems, as it turns out that she encourages her half dozen or so followers not to get paid for their work, because, she purports, if one is paid for one’s work, one cannot possibly be any good, which is really too idiotic to be believable, condemning, as it does, the judgment and professional evaluation of every book, magazine, journal, chapbook editor, agent, publisher, critic, on the entire planet, with the exception of the “poet” herself. Not to mention every writer who has ever been compensated in the history of letters. But there is that attitude out there apparently. I suspect the rationale is that as long as you keep your work to yourself and a few misguided local groupies, you will be assured of a very high self regard no matter what rubbish you turn out and will never have to face public or professional opinion.

1. 
   swan 2010 06 23 at 9:11:48 am

   We all need good feedback in some form. Having been a weekly publisher, I especially love the instant feedback from blogs. Dollars aren’t the only way of being paid, though.

2. 
   black dog barking 2010 06 23 at 6:25:39 pm

   I suspect the rationale is that as long as you keep your work to yourself and a few misguided local groupies, you will be assured of a very high self regard no matter what rubbish you turn out and will never have to face public or professional opinion.

   Lurking behind this statement is a presumption that a healthy economic market exists for an independent writer’s wares, a place the purist can ignore for narcissistic profit. Kurt Vonnegut said somewhere the paying market for writers started drying up by the early 60s as magazine fiction lost national mind-share to teevee. Measured by gross sales, today’s “successful” writing is often an ancillary revenue stream rising from national celebrity, whatever that is.

   FWIW: from AGNIonline—

   Harrison Solow, originally from California, now lives in Wales, where she teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Wales, Lampeter, and is associate director of the new Welsh American Academy at Trinity College, Carmarthen.

3. 
   Andrew 2010 07 01 at 9:37:44 pm

   In many respects I agree with Harrison. I should likely whole-heartedly agree, but something unsuccessful in me starts to cry and does not wish to be mature about it at all.