I was recently at the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, which is run by a guy named Leyton Cougar. He is something of a regional celebrity, because he’s done hundreds of outreach events with wolf ambassadors, educating people about wolves. As I listened to him talk about this work and about the sanctuary, I realized his definition of success is pretty unique.

Success for him is not being a celebrity (though I think he enjoys that). He defines success as helping the wolves in his care. Period. Apart from his family, the wolves are his number one priority, and he spends his days working for them and with them, and he cares a lot more about them than he cares about most humans. He’s defined his life in terms of providing the rescued wolves at the sanctuary with a safe home. If he were to suddenly become famous on a national level and have a lot of money fall in his lap, I bet he’d say, “Good – now I can do this and this and this for the wolves.”

“I wanted steady, challenging work in a variety of fields so that my hummingbird brain wouldn’t get bored.”

This really resonated with me. It’s possible that no matter how successful my fiction becomes I may continue doing nonfiction work for the challenge and the semi-regular paychecks. And because I can.

Point #2. I once saw a TV interview with Elmore Leonard. He apparently quit his day job after about book #5 or so. The interviewer asked him when he felt like a success. Was it after he quit his job? Or was it after a book was made into a movie? Or was it when he finally hit the bestseller lists (with “Glitz” which was something like book #19). He said, “I’ve always felt I was a success.”

That isn’t /long range/ success, but it’s a success that’ll get me where I’m aiming to be with a larger view.