From an interview how Steve Himmer

“Develop what Charles Baxter called, in a great interview at The Days of Yore, a “fuck you” attitude: you’ll learn to know when your writing is doing what it’s meant to even if no one else seems to care. Use the web, make the most of it—the opportunities for friendships and conversations are a tremendous gift—but don’t get too caught up in comparing your own successes (or lack thereof) to the amount of good news in someone else’s Facebook feed.

There are more reasons than the presence or absence of genius why one book or writer gets attention while another doesn’t, and most of those reasons are arbitrary and absurd and unpredictable, so you’ll drive yourself crazy chasing them. Just stick to making up the stuff you think the world needs.”

I like this last paragraph.

Isn´t it so in life, that most of the reasons for success or failure are usually arbitrary, absurd, unlikely and unpredictable, so you´ll drive yourself nuts if you wanna get a rational explanation.