When you hear of a legendary feat, don’t just believe it; look into it.
Like many, I’d been impressed by hearing of the meteoric rise of Joan Didion from a bookish college student submitting an essay in a contest sponsored by Vogue, to being launched into stardom, writing movies and novels, and living her famously glamorous life. I opened Tracy Daugherty’s biography of Didion, The Last Love Song, expecting to be met immediately with a genius word-smith, vaulted to national fame as a young ingenue.
As it turns out, reality was decidedly less sudden and involved a lot more patience, rejection, and work. When Didion submitted her contest winning effort to Vogue in the spring of 1956, she had been writing for years in school, and was writing promotional copy at the Sacramento Union. She had already been published nationally, in Mademoiselle magazine, and was the senior editor of The Occident, the student literary paper at the University of California’s Berkeley campus, where she was majoring in English. It is not too strong to say she was writing and studying writing full time at this point in her life.
The details paint an even more driven writer. The advertised prize for the contest was a two-week trip to Paris, but when Vogue chose Didion, she negotiated for a job instead. Further, her essay was a profile of William Wilson Wurster, a San Francisco architect, not “On Self-Respect” which is often mistakenly identified as the winning essay, but which was written later, to character count, for Vogue in 1961. (Seeing how far the story falls short of the actual record makes me wonder how many of our pop culture ‘histories’ are only held together by the thinnest thread of accuracy!)
Success is rarely mysterious. I don’t point this out to diminish Didion’s star (as if I could even have such an effect), but to call attention to what I consider more admirable. It is more inspiring (and respectful) to look at the body of work a person creates on the way to “suddenly” being acknowledged as successful, than to simply attribute success to their most recent project alone. Didion studied and worked to write an essay both reflective of Vogue’s point of view, while also showcasing her unique voice. In turn, working for Vogue opened the door for her journalism, essays, and novels.
Best-selling author Tom Clancy had a saying; “An overnight success is ten years in the making.” Audiences love the idea of an artist just throwing something at the wall, and the results just ‘suddenly’ taking off, but those successes leave clues. Just as Didion’s career shows, “sudden” success is more often the result of continuing to take chances and continuing to learn and grow. So, the next time you hear about a legendary success, someone becoming this year’s overnight sensation, look deeper. They are likely standing on top of a decade of work.
Photo by Juskteez Vu on Unsplash
