Privilege is often called luck

Yesterday, I sat down to read Zoe York’s Romancing Your Brand: Building a Marketable Genre Fiction Series, and she impressed me immensely with one of the most incisive opening salvos ever included in a writing book. To whit:

The truth is, writing is hard, and publishing is a brutal business—and not always a meritocracy. To survive, and thrive, you need to be tough. You need to believe in yourself and trust your gut. You need to see through smoke and mirrors. You need to shut out all the noise, and find your own path.

But it’s just not that simple, because that takes resources and support. You need a solid platform in life in order to get a really good leap. I know that.

I struggle with the reality that there are a lot of asterisks on good advice. Mental health, physical health, financial stability, access to opportunities—they all factor into our ability to do what someone else has done. Publishing is a weird formula nobody has ever quite figured out, and privilege weighs heavy.

Success takes a lot of hard work. But it also has something to do with the position you start from. And privilege is often called luck.

York, Zoe. Romance Your Brand: Building a Marketable Genre Fiction Series (Publishing How To Book 1) . ZoYo Press. Kindle Edition.

It’s not like I’m unaware of this, as I’ve acknowledged in the past, but I honestly think York’s intro should be a foundational statement for any discussion of craft.