Fortitude - A-Z Challenge, Starting & Sustaining A Writing Career

Courage or strength when facing pain or trouble. That's what fortitude means for the writer. The pain will be inevitable—unless you're an immediate best-seller—and will be along mental lines. 

When the masterpiece you've slaved over for months/years can't get the traction it needs to do well in the marketplace, you'll begin to doubt you're gone down the right road. You'll wonder why you ever thought of taking on writing as a permanent part your future and there will be days when you feel your writing cannot compare with all wonderful books being sold by other writers.

For many of us artists, marketing and promotion feels like a full-time job and can be a time suck if we get busy selling the one or two books we've written to anybody who'll listen. One writer likened the job of selling books to being a tiny goldfish in a pond with millions of other fish. The reality of the situation is that with the ease of publishing many persons are more inclined to follow their dreams of putting out a book.

By the same token, it's easy to become discouraged and give up when nothing happens in the first few years of writing and publishing, but we all know about that comparison between a sprint and a marathon. Enough said, I think.

There will be days when you wonder why you're even continuing with that next story when you've barely sold 50 copies of the last one, or when someone writes a review that makes you want to curl up and hide. This is when you'll call on the faith you have in your abilities and press forward with courage, knowing that writing is a fundamental part of who you are and that aborting your mission is not an option.

Everyone thinks they can be a writer. Most people don't understand what's involved. The real writers persevere. The ones that don't either don't have enough fortitude and they probably wouldn't succeed anyway, or they fall in love with the glamour of writing as opposed to the writing of writing.
                                                                                  - Peter McWilliams

The other day I was reading a book by an author who had given himself the task of writing 100 books before he declared whether he was successful at writing. Since I believe it's good to have targets, I set myself a goal of getting to 50 books. How many books are you going to realistically set for yourself as a measure (your personal version) of success?