Helen: British playwright Katherine Soper recently won a major UK prize for her first play. Reports about her success were giddy with the fact that she was also a shop assistant. Focusing on the shock that such a person might be creative and intelligent (!), the media concocted a rags-to-riches tale that entirely ignored her degree from Cambridge and masters in playwriting from the Royal College of Speech and Drama. What do you all think of that?

The illusion of overnight success

Joy: It’s so interesting the work that the fetish of the “rags to riches” story does. It’s as if success only counts if it comes suddenly, bestowed like magic upon someone who’s a blank slate. I wonder if

something about this lets us as a society devalue our artists who are in the process of honing their craft, ignoring works-in-progress in the favor of an all-or-nothing mentality.

Jia Jia: This narrative of overnight success also slots suspiciously conveniently into our capitalistic culture, as the deliberate downplaying of all the hard work actually turns the road to success into a mystery. Everyone feels like they should be famous and a billionaire but no one quite knows how.

We end up with a sense of existential guilt (are we not trying hard enough?) which makes us all very susceptible to exploitation,

whether it’s overwork, underpay, underfunding or the compulsion to buy some product or app to make ourselves more successful.

Stephanie: Whereas, really, success and excellence are more of a lifelong journey and effort (like the Japanese word ikigai), which flies in the face of that awful “successful before you’re 30 or it’ll never happen” attitude we sometimes see in the media. The thing is, what is success? This woman was a writer and playwright before this award, and she’s still a writer and playwright. Plus, this “rags to riches” narrative spreads the myth that “success” is a linear journey, and that once you’ve made it, you’ve made it forever, which we know just isn’t the case.

Carlos: It’s true; becoming good or successfully recognized at something only comes from hard work, and being constant and consistent. The prevalent marketing and social media gossip machine does not help to understand what it takes for long term excellence.

Jia Jia: And then once you’ve “made it,” or rather, once the powers that be decide you’re “it,”

the overnight rags-to-riches myth is such a handy marketing tool to hype up your worth and turn you into a lucrative franchise.

The pressure of “making it” by a certain age.

Hawa: It seems like sometimes people perceive things that took my peers and I years to obtain as “the point” of writing… whereas those of us who do this for not-megabuxx make huge sacrifices if we’re not being supported financially by other means.

We do this because we love it to the point of what one would call a form of insanity,

what else is constancy in the face of zero guarantee of “success”? The truth is, everything in writing and the arts is a crapshoot. You have to do it because you love it, and that overwhelmingly means supporting it with a day job.

Charly: I’m a playwright and I moved to NYC just last year. Several people have made comments that have made it seem like they are annoyed that I just arrived in NYC and got opportunities that they hadn’t. I was writing even when I wasn’t in NYC and I was studying other things that would eventually make their way into my work. The idea that I just came in and “didn’t work for it” is ridiculous.

On the flip side, I also personally struggle with remembering that I have only recently dedicated my time to pursuing this career full-time and have to check myself when I get discouraged or frustrated when I don’t get certain opportunities. There is some image that makes the Facebook rounds every now and again that says: don’t compare your page one in life to someone who is on page twenty of theirs. We all move in our own time. It’s a crapshoot.

I have to constantly remind myself that my career is just that…mine and it will look different than someone else’s…and I always have to come back to the why. Why I write.

The real motivator is love, not recognition

Joy: Thanks, Charly, I really hear you on that. I love writing, always have, and have been jotting things down most of my life. I’ve been talking for years about being a writer or not being a writer, as if it were some sort of strange binary, that I needed to have some sort of “big break” in order to become one (even though I know on so many levels that’s just not how it works). I’ve just recently gotten more disciplined about writing regularly, really practicing the art of it, workshopping my pieces with other people, and sometimes I feel like I’m so behind where I’d like to be as a writer. But then I get into a story and remember how much I love it, and that it’s already such a part of who I am…the anxiety over getting some nebulous “success” out of it dissolves into the practice of doing what I love.

Hawa: But all artists have works in progress! That’s what makes you one

Kasey: It’s true. As an actor, I feel like all there is is talk of “getting your big break.” You audition constantly, reach out to agents, submit to projects, practice your craft, and pay to network with casting directors and agents in the hopes that they can help you bring your career to the next level. I sometimes feel like I’m stuck in mud and spinning my wheels; that I work so hard and sacrifice so much with little to show for it. Being an actor often feels looks you’re grasping at straws for that elusive “break” that may never come. But when you do get the chance to do what you love, you’re reminded why you do it in the first place.

Hawa: Exactly.

And then even when you “make it,” it seems you’ll always be faced with a blank page/canvas/theatre space, etc.

It never ends. The focus when it comes to the arts is so much on “achievement” and “impact”, things that the worst kinds of arts education emphasize, rather than process, discovery, learning, repeated failure as a given and a gift. The act of doing is all there is. It’s bloody fun, but deeply difficult.

Kasey: It’s exactly that, the deep meaning in the “act of doing.” I’m writing a play right now that goes up this winter, and I’ve been so concerned about the final product that I haven’t been allowing myself to enjoy the process.

And that is where the beauty, the creativity, the growth lives.