How to Be Unsuccessful

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with with Lindsey Vonn. At first, maybe, it was sick curiosity. I was never a Vonn fan in the sense that I kept up with her, but like much of the world, I paid attention after I heard she was skiing the Olympic downhill with a torn ACL. Having lived with an unrepaired ACL myself for three months, I found that horrible and fascinating.

Then she crashed.

Lindsey Vonn’s Instagram was, up to that point, mostly beautiful white mountainscapes and quotes like, “Don’t ever stop believing in yourself!!” beneath magazine covers and montages of winning ski runs. As she entered this Olympic run, she wrote, “I’ve won everything I could have ever won. I’m not doing this to prove anything to anyone. I’m doing this for me.”

Obviously, Lindsey Vonn is successful. She’s accomplished great things, and her words hold more water than the charlatanesque success coaches that are a dime-a-dozen on Instagram, who think success looks like Bugattis, women, infinity pools, and $5 bottled water.  But professional distinction does not make Vonn unique; advice from genuinely successful celebrities also proliferates on the internet, full of maxims about haters and hard work.

But what about people like us? With a dream everyone says it’s time to grow out of?

Sometimes it feels cheap to have someone who has made it, who knows all their hard work meant something, crane their neck to shout toward the back of the pack, Everyone told me I couldn’t do it! They were wrong! These things are too easy to say once you are the one percent.

I don’t want to hear Mariah Carey or LeBron James talk about how hard it is to make it. I believe them, sure, but it feels patronizing, with diamonds glittering in their ears and 2010 Dom Perignon Luminous Blanc clutched in their manicured fingers, to say never give up on your dreams!

I didn’t give up. I haven’t. But I’m still here with my unsuccess, in the chasm between dream and achieve.

When I met with Lazar this year, I raged about how discouraging this all was – what is the point? I keep reading and writing and hoping and it’s still like a kiss you can’t do alone.

Lazar told me a story about a friend he’s known for ages, who wrote all his life, and has finally gotten something published at sixty. Is that supposed to make me feel better? 

I guess it’s a story about perseverance. But it’s up for debate whether it has a happy ending. 

Lazar told me when I was twenty-one, “Don’t go to an MFA unless they pay you. If you have to pay, you’re not good enough.” When I repeated this to him at twenty-seven, as we discussed the unfunded programs I’d apply to this year, ones I’d have to pay for with my 529, he grimaced. “I don’t think I said that,” he muttered. “Or I didn’t mean it like that.” 

Then I told him I’d finished a novel I thought he’d like, based on a short story I wrote for my thesis when he was my advisor, a story we’d worked on together in Audubon Park — because if we stayed on campus we had to wear masks, and we wanted to see each other’s faces while we talked about my art.

“This is the one I told you I wanted to turn into a novel,” I said, “and you told me I couldn’t. You said, "‘What would it be about? There’s not enough here.’” 

“I don’t think I said that,” he protested. “I wouldn’t have said that.” 

This is how we’ve been since I was eighteen. I quote him to himself, he argues. A lot of the time, he doesn’t believe he said something because it’s simply too profound.  

When I was in his class as a freshman, I wrote down, as he discussed characterization, “To be perfect is to be invisible.” He didn’t believe, when I mentioned it senior year, that it had happened. 

Another time, he said, “I have Swiss cheese for brains,” which I wrote down as well, because I loved the turn of phrase. So I quoted that back to him, after the one about perfection. That stumped him.  

In From Where You Dream, Butler says the best writers have the worst memories. That everything disappears into the spaghetti of their brains and comes back out new and interesting. He says the worst thing for a writer is perfect recall, because then all your experiences get regurgitated like diary entries and you don’t make the new beautiful magical stuff.

Unfortunately, I’m not Lazar or Butler, and I have a great memory. An exceptional long term memory, actually, and I use it in my writing. Maybe it helps me, or maybe it means I’ll never be like Lazar: successful. But maybe is a non-zero chance.

Pressure is privilege, Nicholas always reminds me. Lindsey Vonn knows this like she knows her name. After her crash in Milan she wrote, “Standing in the starting gate yesterday was an incredible feeling that I will never forget. Knowing I stood there having a chance to win was a victory in and of itself.”

Louisa Thomas wrote the public view of this moment in her article for The New Yorker, How Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin Have Defined Greatness:

A week before official Olympic training runs were set to begin in the small ski town of Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, Vonn. . . announced that she’d ruptured her A.C.L.—and that, if she was at all physically able, she planned to ski in the Olympics anyway. Immortality was still on the table.

I love that line, “Immortality was still on the table.” Then Thomas continues, describing what must’ve been the most unspeakable agony of Vonn’s life in three tidy sentences.

But after just thirteen seconds, Vonn clipped a gate and lost her balance. She tumbled down the mountain, skidding to a stop with her skis splayed. The crowd fell into a stunned silence, which made it possible to hear her cries of pain.

Thomas ends the article with the icy sentiment that, “For Vonn, perhaps it could only ever end this way.”

That’s it then? Vonn is over? She’s towed off dangling from a helicopter and we all look away forever?

That’s the fear, the reality, that makes Olympians keep their injuries and disappointments off Instagram, in favor of glossy Times magazine covers and Serena Kerrigan interview clips. Here’s an example Sarah Shepard wrote for The New York Times:

Two-time heptathlete world champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson ruptured her Achilles tendon while training for the delayed Tokyo Olympics in 2021 and chose the opposite path to Vonn. She kept the injury hidden, posting pictures on social media pretending she was training.

But with Lindsey, there’s really no pretending. The world saw her crash, heard her cry, watched her disappear into the clouds. There are no pretend training posts when you’re hospitalized with compartment syndrome, complex tibia and fibula fractures, and as lagniappe, a broken ankle.

But that’s not her ending. Since her crash, Lindsey has continued to update her Instagram with shameless vulnerability. In doing so, she takes back the narrative. She doesn’t let Louisa Thomas end her story with the opaque omen it could only ever end this way. Instead, Lindsey writes through her unsuccess with remarkable certainty:

I was willing to risk and push and sacrifice for something I knew I was absolutely capable of doing. I will always take the risk of crashing while giving it my all, rather than not ski to my potential and have regret. I never want to cross finish line and say "what if?" 

But just because I was ready, that didn't guarantee me anything. Nothing in life is guaranteed. That's the gamble of chasing your dreams, you might fall but if you don't try you'll never know. 

The humility it takes to write like this floors me. To be an athlete standing at the literal top of a mountain, under the biggest global spotlight in sports with every armchair watcher squinting at your missing ACL, saying who does she think she is, and still ski, crash, and tell the whole truth. Sarah Shepard wrote about this honesty:

Rarely does an athlete open a window on those deeply personal, often agonising moments in the aftermath of serious injury. Rarely do they share any real details of the injury or the medical procedures that they have undergone. And rarely do they allow the public to see them at their most vulnerable, when medals, sponsors, followers and fame mean nothing and they are just another human in need of help. 

Lindsey Vonn is different. 

Obviously, Lindsey is different. She’s one in a million. And I’m not like her; I don’t have the strength of the Inner Game like she does, and under the weight of her pressure I would break. And when she wrote, “Sometimes we don't achieve the dreams we know we could have,” she already had 82 World Cup wins, four World Cup championships, three Olympic medals, and all that money.

But the reason I keep reading her posts and watching Cars 3 to hear McQueen say, “I don’t know, I just never thought I couldn’t,” is that I know how to be unsuccessful. Vonn already has champagne and diamonds, while I’m still down 0-5 in the second set, muttering under my breath, “Who said I couldn’t?” (Try does not equal succeed. I lost 0-6).

When you’re unsuccessful, it’s mostly not climatic moments. There is no gold star when you wake up and write for 45 minutes before work every morning. (But there is always a delicious V8 Energy.)

It’s mostly just the chasm and grit.

In the chasm, no one will clap when you finish another book. (I finished my fourth novel! It’s called Lightningblood!) 

In the chasm, people will laugh at you. When they smirk and say, “I wanted to write books, too. I still have them in a box in the attic,” don’t give them the benefit of the doubt. They’re being rude.  

In the chasm, people will assume you’re better than you are. When strangers ask, have I heard of you? You don’t have to smile when you say no. 

In the chasm, people will think you have fully formed novels springing from your head like Athena from Zeus. When someone says, “Wow! You write books? I could never do that,” you’ll want to say, yes you could. Anyone can do it.  Because you’ll hear them calling it magic, when you know it’s all hard work.  

When the people who know and love you are shocked that you didn’t get into grad school again, shocked that you got another round of query rejections, shocked that you didn’t make it to the next round of the short story contest, you won’t feel vindicated. It won’t make you feel better, it will make you feel worse.  

When your husband gets so used to hearing about your rejections that he’s completely unshocked by the newest one, that won’t make you feel better either. 

You’ll have this conversation. Again. And again. And again. (especially if you have middle school students). 

Q: “Where can I read your books?” 

A: “Unfortunately, you can’t.”

Q: “Why not?”

A: “They’re not published.”

(if it’s a middle schooler, insert here: are they not good enough? And you’ll get to say, apparently not.) 

Q: “When will they published?”

A: (You’ll swallow this).  “Hopefully soon.”

Q: “Have you tried self-publishing? Everybody self-publishes these days. Have you heard of this Amazon–”

But it’s okay. All of that is good. Because it is that skin-crawling dissatisfaction that will get you out of bed for the 121st day in a row to write. Success is not what makes you squint at the page and bang out some more words.

And even though there is no applause, no gold star, and even the praise of your family has dwindled to indulgent smiles, there will be something. 

Your critique partner will tell you your first chapter has narrative drive.

The day before your application is due, Lazar will text: I sent your letter. I read your writing sample and it is fantastic.

You’ll enter five short story contests, and one story will win honorable mention; another will win sixth place.

One of your students will say, My sister loved your blog.

Over the weekend, as Nicholas and I folded up the tent on our last morning camping, we looked at its wet, dirty floor and then looked at each other. It wasn’t supposed to rain. But it did. Men plan and God laughs.

“This is why you’re supposed to put a tarp underneath,” I said.  

“Camping is hard,” Nick protested. “You always say I did something wrong.” 

“You can’t be perfect,” I told him, “so you’re gonna have to let go of that.”

Easy to say to your husband. To yourself? Haha.

You can’t be perfect, and maybe you can’t even be successful, but you can try.

I already gave you the first half of this quote from Vonn: “Sometimes we don't achieve the dreams we know we could have.” Then, this wheelchair-bound champion who barely escaped amputation said, “But that is the also the beauty of life; we can try.”

“What are her chances of victory?” Louisa Thomas wrote in The New Yorker. “And how much does it matter? It would be reckless to guess. There is so much a skier—no matter how much she’s willing to risk, no matter how much she prepares—can’t control.”

This weekend I sent off my last MFA application. To Bennington, with Lazar’s approval — a program that is not fully-funded. I guess, when your student is eighteen, it’s easier to tell her she’s too good to settle. When she’s twenty-seven, you mitigate.

I grinned at the please acknowledge that you will not be able to go back and make changes once you hit submit checkbox, launched it into cyberspace, drove to my parents’ house, and crushed two beers.

“The application is really good,” I told my dad. “The three years I spent applying to LSU led to this application: the best thing I could possibly make. At least, if I don’t get in, I’ll know I’m not good enough.” 

If I don’t get in, there won’t be any I guess I wasn’t lucky this year. No if only I worked harder. I put everything into the 43 pages of writing I submitted. Everything I am; the best I, as an artist, have to give. The timing was such that I had to submit my Letter of Intent for work before my Bennington application, so I quit my job. I put all my eggs in one basket. I believed in myself. 

Why should I think this year would be any different? That in 2026 I would get in, after three years of we write with regret?

Because what makes Lindsey Vonn different is not just her strength in skiing. Skill is not enough. Lindsey Vonn is different because of her ability to be unsuccessful. Because when she’s absolutely smashed up by life, she doesn’t break. She spawns articles like Sarah Shepard’s “Lindsey Vonn is owning her Olympic trauma. It could be a gamechanger.” She faces setbacks with her head up and her goggles down, both middle fingers to pain and libel. When Lindsey Vonn defines greatness, it’s in moments like this one from Louisa Thomas:

ESPN the Magazine asked Vonn how different she would be if she’d had better health throughout her career. “I’m a much happier person because of the injuries,” she replied. “If I didn’t have those setbacks, it would be too easy. Everyone needs an obstacle to overcome to show yourself what you are capable of.” She was, by then, considered the best ever—and her success was magnified by her charisma and the glamorous, unapologetic way that she seemed to speed through life.

Unapologetic. That’s something most of us, especially as women, need to be more of. Lindsey Vonn’s greatness is not marked only by her unmitigated confidence, but her indestructible mindset. “People said I was selfish,” Vonn wrote under a montage of her #1 downhill season, “and should give my Olympic spot to someone else. So… I just wanted to recap my season for all the haters out there that don’t understand what it means to earn your spot.”

In Losing the Plot, I wrote about the match I chose to reschedule instead of letting my opponent default. Why not take a forfeit? Because being dropped off on the top of Everest would mean nothing about your strength, greatness, or any measure of success. We need to be able to say, “I am good enough.” No mitigation. Again I tell you, “If I can’t even say it, who will?”

I can do this. I will do this.

“And what will you do if you don’t get in?” my therapist asked.  

“I’ll be okay,” I said after a moment. “It would really fucking suck, it would be so hard and I don’t want to go through that, but I would survive.”

Nicholas Motivatin’ Mueller sent me this video: “The path to success is simple / bite off more than you can chew, / then figure out how to chew it” with the Switchfoot song “Meant to Live” playing in the background:

Fumbling his confidence
And wondering why the world has passed him by
Hoping that he's bent for more than arguments
And failed attempts to fly, fly

We were meant to live for so much more
Have we lost ourselves?
Somewhere we live inside

Has the world buried your greatness within you? Laughed at you, made you apologize? The world can’t change the truth: somewhere inside you, perhaps lost, is something great. Is it that you wanted to be a writer? If so — I meant it when I said anyone can write a book. Bite off more than you can chew. Then, with your pen and paper, start chewing.

Bennington sends out their decisions this month. If that means another rejection, I will be okay. Because I believe what the beautiful, brave Lindsey Vonn said: “Life is too short not to take chances on yourself. Because the only failure in life is not trying.” Success, unsuccess — your ability to try depends not on these things.

“You’re not very good at trying things,” Nicholas told me tenderly on the way to my tennis match yesterday. That’s because I am fundamentally wired to do 0% of something, or 100% of it. And so, we’re back to this:

I have to. I will.