Reader Glen writes in to point out Noah Richler’s interesting, candid take on writing and success. I consider myself successful if I can look a piece from a year ago without wretching. Happens more and more as time goes on. So either I’m getting better or my standards are falling. I’m fine with either.

…writing—for the practical—is a business, is still a job, and for it to be pursued successfully then I must take all sorts of measures, and take stock, for instance, of the time I must invest not just writing but acquiring work and tending to my employers and sowing the seeds of possible work with others. Some of this information, at least to me, is quite interesting. I am able to see, for example, that revenue accrued from the web grew from 0% of my total income in 2007, to about 2% in 2008 and close to 8% in 2009. That may not seem like much but collectively represents, in fact, this writer’s third largest ‘account’, if one put it that way, and constituted three times as my prime source of work in newspapers and magazines.