OVERNIGHT SUCCESS HAPPENS AFTER YEARS OF OVERNIGHT WORK

You’ve been writing for months, right? Maybe a year or two. When is your big break gonna come? Steven Pressfield was “fifty-two, specifically, when he sold his first novel.”

From Rain Bennett, who recently interviewed Pressfield:

“I think about all the writers, filmmakers, musicians, and entrepreneurs who have quietly decided that if it hasn’t happened by a certain age, it probably won’t. Who have looked at the overnight success stories on social media and measured themselves against a timeline that was never real to begin with.”

As Sean Cannon said on one of our Escape Pod Zoom calls, “you just have to be a little bit better so you can survive the war of attrition.” Don’t count on overnight success. Keep making the work, stacking the days, so you can get up and do it the next day. The overnight success happens after years of overnight work.