The Corridor of Success

Or how your options can get narrower the better you do, and what to do about it.

There is a truth of writing and creative professions that no one talks about – that once you have success you become trapped by that success, unable to break out into new areas while being drawn into a narrower career created by the victories of the past. This is the corridor of success, and it’s one of the great puzzles of a creative career.

A lot of advice to aspiring writers focuses on breaking in, on getting past the initial barriers to the profession. Typically, that means getting published. Each creative profession has its equivalent: being cast, being featured, getting hired, getting a screen credit, and so on. How you get past this first door is the focus of entire books and a lot of ink, literal and digital, and understandably so – it’s very, very difficult. But one day, with enough persistence, luck, and talent (you will need at least two) you will get through that first door, and that’s where a lot of the advice runs out.

Why there is not nearly as much written about the reality of being a writer as there is becoming one is a tricky question, but I think it might have to do with the fact that Writers are Full of Shit (and have to be), as Alec Worley notes. In place of clear advice, you get myths about the writer’s life. One of those myths is that once you are through the front door of the published writers house, all the other doors in writing will fly open for you. The door to publishing your next book – open. The door to writing what you want and it being published – open. The door to writing in another genre – open. The door to working in another media – open. The door to… and so on. 

And that’s not what happens.

Firstly, all the doors might stay shut. That happens. You write one book, or one graphic novel, or one radio play, and that’s it, you can’t get people to accept a follow up. There can be all kinds of reasons for this, which I might go into in a later article. It’s rare, but it is possible.

That scenario aside, what is more likely is that if there is a market for your first piece of work – and you did good work, and you didn’t make enemies getting through that first door – you will likely find that you can do it again. Why? Because you will have acquired the two things that are necessary to open doors in a creative industry: connections and previous work.  

Let’s just divert briefly to look at that truth. As a writer who is not blessed either with massive luck or a very strong public following already, your ability to get more work depends on the work you have already done and the people you know. I am not saying it should be this way, I am simply saying that it is the way things tend to be.

And this is where the trap of the corridor of success begins.

Having unlocked the first door by getting your book published or your script picked up, you have someone to talk to about the next thing and have proved you can do a type of writing successfully – great! But because of your previous work, the people you are talking to will expect more of the same.

Imagine you have sold a sci-fi comic script, and now you know the editor at that publisher. You can come up with another sci-fi comic script idea and pitch it and they are likely to take it. You pitch, you score, and you are through the second door. Several projects later you are an established sci-fi comic writer. You have absolutely “made it”. Now you know how things work, you know people, and you have that all important body of work behind you. You can open doors now, sometimes quite easily…. Except they are the broadly the same door.

Once you are a sci-fi comics writer, the doors that open will all tend to lead to variations of that genre, medium and market. Other doors will mostly stay closed. If you were to turn around and look back, you would see a straight path through the house of creation back to that first door. You are now in the corridor of success, where the doors in front open relatively easily, but not so those to either side. You can keep doing the type of work you have already been doing with less effort, but it’s difficult to deviate.

Why? Because there is no writer master key that you are handed when you have your first work published, just as there is none for an actor, a film maker, or musician. This can be a surprising and dispiriting discovery.

To deviate from your corridor of success, you will need to start over. You will need people in the new target area and to build a track record of work within it. Your literary novel record and contacts in the world of literary fiction will not open the door into writing comics, or TV scripts. 

So how do you do this?

Focus on the work

Just like when you were breaking in, the work comes first. Do the work that you want to have published. If you are a sci-fi comic writer trying to get into literary fiction, you are going to need a literary fiction novel draft. If you want to write movies, you are going to need a spec script. And just like when you first started, you need to concentrate on making this work the best example of what you can do.

Get to know people

Become part of the industry – talk, make, contacts, build up a sense of who is who. If you know people that know people, ask for introductions, go to events, be there, listen to what the key keepers and door watchers talk about. Remember that people are an inescapable part of this process.

Remember you have done this before.

It may seem dispiriting or even annoying to have to start over. But this time you have experience. You have done this before. You know that luck matters as much as skill. You know how to work, how to refine. You likely have a network of people that might be able to help. You have many advantages compared to when you opened that first door.

Beware the trap of the familiar and the easy

You will have to make effort. Possibly a lot of effort. And that is the trap of the corridor of success; it is easier to go through the door that is just like the one you just walked through. Not only does it takes less effort to keep doing what you have already had success doing, but there are also a lot of incentives not to deviate. Not least of which is that you will be paid less for work in an area to which  you are new. These are not small considerations – why do something that requires more effort for likely less reward? The same reason you opened that first door – because that state is temporary, and if you don’t want to stay in your corridor, it’s what you have to do.

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Edited by Greg Smith