The Fourth Ingredient to Success

Why be an ass when you can be nice?

I’ve been trying to identify something less expected that makes success in the arts possible and I came up with Relationships. I’m adding this to my list of things you need to “make it,” whatever making it means to you (to me it was publishing my first novel). The list is short: Talent, Delusion and Perseverance. Last year, I added Reading to that list when I shared it with my students who for the most part didn’t read, or rather didn’t do the readings (it was a bit like telling film students to watch film; I thought those things are a given but here we were). 

I’m not the best with relationships. I think I make a good friend and I have really amazing, deep friendships, and I’ve had some incredible romantic relationships as well but overall, I don’t consider myself as someone who is good at people. I used to have as my bio on Facebook: “I hate parties and not being invited to them,” which sums me up well, I think. I often find myself tired and wanting to run home when in social situations like parties or events. I went to a lovely reading recently and all I could think of was how if it ended early enough I’d be able to walk home and catch the pink and purple sunset we had that evening. There was nothing wrong with the reading, it was actually one of the best ones I’ve been to, and the people I talked to and met were smart, funny and interesting, but I was relieved when it all ended and I could leave. 

I’m pretty awesome in smaller groups, one-on-one is probably my preferred set-up, and I do have a lot of friends who don’t make me feel drained and who inspire me and who I cannot wait to see again. But I’m just saying, in general I err on the Introverted side. 

Recently, I had to do some rather uncomfortable cold-calling/ reachout in connection with my next novel coming out in September. It was in the midst of writing unsolicited emails to people I haven’t previously spoken to or haven’t talked to in a while—or worse, had talked to but had to now ask for help, which is my worst fear—that I realized that fourth ingredient to success. Relationships. I felt grateful to the earlier me for not fucking up too many of those and for being able to reach out to people without having to wonder whether I was dismissive or rude in the past. 

I’ve always tried to attend to people in my industry, the way I try to attend to people in my social life, the way I try to treat people in service, or, actually, any human being that I’m interacting with and that I do want to have in my life. In other words, I try to respect them and appreciate the time and attention they give me. Listen, this doesn’t always work, I have my moments, I can be blunt and impulsive and I’ve apologized many times for behaving like a pirate, but in general I do believe that ALL relationships in one’s life need to be tended to, need to be valued—and most importantly one should never look at people in terms of their usefulness or arrange them according to their importance on their To-See list. (And if you do do this, you might find one day that the little intern you treated like garbage is now in charge of promoting your art or better, hiring you.) To me this is common sense, and it is something I try to practice. I talked with a good friend who’s an actress and she told me it was the same for her and the film industry—she just made a decision to treat the P.A. or catering with the same respect she had for the showrunner, or her co-stars. And we talked about the people who tend to kiss only the ass that they think will be beneficial to their career and their success, and how that doesn’t necessarily work, and how the worst kind of an artist is an opportunist and an ass-kisser. (It’s one of those things that I feel you can just sense on people, the same way you sense fake confidence, and it’s a little gross.) 

I meet a lot of people who are super talented and who have the delusion and the perseverance (so the first three ingredients). I’ve met some while teaching, kids who I could see publishing stories in The Paris Review a few years down the road or getting their first book deal before turning 30. And I’ve always paid attention to how they are with their peers, whether they participate in workshops and offer feedback, whether they seem to just be nice to those around them. I’ve only been teaching for a few years so I haven’t had a student publish their first novel yet but I’m trying to remember the ones who make it and I’m betting that the kids who seem to treat others with respect and kindness will be the ones whose books I will read one day in the future.