Does silence truly equate failure?

 

The other day I heard something to the effect of “Success is loud, failure is silent.” The headline had to do with the social media culture and how only everyone’s success is touted online for everyone to see and read. Nobody ever talks about their failures. Their defeats. And even if they do, minds are quickly onto something else.

The phrase about silence being failure resonated with me.

Silence.

The proverbial crickets.

Especially in regard to social media.

It does feel like failure. No matter how many posts a person posts, no matter how much a person pays to advertise, no matter how much a creator interacts, silence feels like failure. Silence itself isn’t failure to me. Silence is peaceful. I came to terms with silence a while back. I appreciate silence and know the strength of solitude. I know it could mean that there is movement under the surface. I know my mind, I know who I am, I know what I am, and I am comfortable being that that person. 

But silence when you are trying to accomplish something that requires other people? It is honestly difficult to get people to react, interact, and comment on a single post. It is difficult to get whatever social media platform you are on to show your post to the people who follow you, let alone the rest of the world. It is also difficult to pay for advertising, only to have your ads never shown or rarely shown. It is difficult to get people to read something. Attention spans aren’t what they used to be. And I’ll bet most people haven’t even made it this far in reading this post.

Failure is heavy. Failure questions. Failure feels like yet another “after careful consideration” reject letter to add to my folder. (That means nothing -- They say that JK Rowling had over 50 such letters for Harry Potter.) It is increasingly difficult in today’s world to find a publisher who will accept an author without a huge social media following who submits a manuscript that doesn’t have ‘all-inclusive’ themes in it, because if you have a straight white male as your main character, you’re already screwed.

Silence feels like failure when you’ve sold over 200 units and have only 15% of those leave ratings/reviews. And while I’m grateful to have sold over 200 units, I do wonder if people actually like the books or if they’ve just been added to the To-Be-Read pile and buried. Or was it truly so ghastly to them that they never finished it? I’ll never know, but as an author, I could write quite the story about it.

And, yes, in moments of unwanted silence, I do wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I wonder if my work is ‘good enough’ because I can’t get people to read my book or talk about my books. The local paper won’t even respond to me when I’m trying to get my work out there. And so, all avenues are seemingly blocked. Wrong way. Turn around. This is not the way.

That’s okay. I’ve been down a great many of those roads in the past. Yeah, in the past some of those roads I should have realized that the signs were correct.

But other roads led to great success and happiness because those signs were just fears and insecurities.

But there are some days you have to pause and wonder about those signs. Why is it so difficult? Would it be easier to quit? Of course, it’s always easier to doubt and fall prey to that line of thinking, but why is it that I have the love to write, have the ability to pour out page after page, and weave a story that people get lost in if this is not what I’m supposed to be doing? (And then the fear sets in – What if I’m destined to become one of those authors that future English teachers love because my work becomes popular after I’m dead? That’d be irony.)

And yet, I keep writing. I keep typing. I keep getting my books out there because I know I have people out there who love my books. And in all honesty I know it only takes one person. One single person. And that is why I keep ‘advertising.’ That is why I keep going with my posts that no one sees. That is why I keep submitting my books. Because one of these days, that one person is going to see the potential. That one person is going to see how special these books are. That one person is going to have the connections. And that one person is going to help.

So, some days silence feels like failure, while some days silence is refreshing.

But every day, I know that if I didn’t do this, I’d regret it -- And I learned long ago that if I have to have regrets in my life, they need to be for what I did, instead of what I didn’t do. Each rejection letter, each door shut, it just means that that publisher isn't the correct one for me and they are choosing to miss out on one heck of an adventure.

And so no matter how many social media crickets I hear out there, I’ll make sure the keys on my computers are louder. 

One day. 

One moment. 

One person. 

One ‘yes.’ 

I know it’ll happen. It will unfold. And I will be ready for it.

Until then, an indie author I will be! You can find all of my books online at www.amazon.com/author/embrooks, at barnesandnoble.com, and on Apple Books! They are available in eBook, paperback, and hardcover! Please tell your favorite Barnes and Noble brick and mortar locations to carry all of my books in paperback so you can find them there too! Now available in eBook on Kobo, Smashwords, Fable, Vivilio, Gardners, and Tolino.

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