There's No Such Thing as an Overnight Success. (Or IS There?)

A career in the arts is one of the only professions where your life can be completely transformed in an instant.

Back in the mid-90s, I wrote the novel that would eventually become Geography Club, and I sent it out to agents and editors.

Everyone rejected the book — literally, hundreds of people. Most of them said they liked the project but told me some variation of the same thing: “It won’t sell — there’s just no market for a book about gay teenagers.”

I did finally land an agent, and she sent it to HarperCollins. Everyone there loved the book too, but as usual, they were convinced it wouldn’t sell any copies. Still, one editor pushed hard, and he finally managed to get me a publishing deal, albeit with a tiny advance.

When the book was released in 2003, no one had any expectations for the book at all.

But two days later, my editor called. “Good news!” he said. “The book is selling so strongly that we’ve sold out the first printing, so we’ve decided to go into a second printing. And in between the time we decided to go into a second printing, all those books sold out too, even though they’re not printed yet, so now we’re going into a third printing!”

Over the next few weeks, I received five different offers from movie producers who wanted to adapt my book for the movies. And suddenly, HarperCollins wanted more books from me too.

I was, for lack of a better phrase, an overnight success.

In the years following Geography Club’s publication, I averaged about 300 speaking events a year — sometimes four speeches a day.

A lot of artists really hate the expression “overnight success” — for good reason. It’s true that some writers or actors sometimes become successful in a very short span of time, but that quick explosion of fame usually only comes after years or even decades of intense practice and soul-killing rejection.

That was definitely true in my case.

That said, a career in the arts is pretty unusual in that you really can find major success in a day or two. Is there any other situation like that?

Sure, anyone can “go viral” on social media and end up being seen by millions of people. But social media fame usually leaves as fast as it comes.

And many jobs can result in great new opportunities — a politician can win an important election, or an office worker can get a big promotion. But most of the time, these successes don’t come completely out of the blue, not like they do in the arts.

I’ve written before about how a career in the arts is most similar to the experience of elite athletes. Some Olympic athletes can even find success not just overnight but in the course of a few seconds.

I’ve also written a lot about how weird a career in the arts is — but I’ve mostly focused on the negative. It’s weird in really good ways too.

The fact that massive success can come virtually overnight is one really good way.

Applause is always nice. Photo by Hayley Murray on Unsplash

I also know this kind of “instant” success happens quite often in the arts — not just because I’ve experienced it, but because I’ve witnessed it happen to so many of my friends and colleagues.

I used to teach creative writing at Vermont College, and two of my best students, Jandy Nelson and Julie Berry, went on to win YA literature’s most high profile award, the Printz Award. Neither “overnight” success surprised me in the least.

Back when I edited content websites, one of my fellow editors once showed me a no-budget video series she had just started to run, starring a promising young comedian named Kate McKinnon.

And an online writer-friend of mine, Matt McMann, has been disappointed lately that his publisher, Penguin Random House, chose not to publish his next series of books — only to wake up over the holidays to find that Escape From Grimstone Manor, the first book in his existing middle grade series, Monsterious, had landed on the USA Today Bestseller list.

Matt McMann’s fun and funny Monsterious series.

Of course, stories of “overnight success” not only don’t dwell on what came before the sudden breakthrough, but they also don’t mention what comes after — how mainstream success doesn’t always feel like you thought it would, and how maintaining it can be maddeningly elusive.

Here’s the story of how my own career tanked after the breakout success of Geography Club (if you keep scrolling down, you’ll see that it ultimately has a happy ending — kinda-sorta).

They also did end up making a movie version of Geography Club, but that didn’t turn out the way I expected either.

Scenes from the Geography Club feature film experience.

As for Matt McMann’s book landing on that bestseller list, well, it hasn’t caused the editors at Penguin Random House to change their minds about not publishing his next series.

Yet! That’s the thing about a career in the arts and “overnight successes”: just because that kind of sudden success happens once doesn’t mean it can’t happen again further down the line.

When a second overnight success happens a long time after the first one, it’s usually called a “comeback.”

A comeback is a lot like an overnight success, except you tend to be a lot wiser when it happens — at least wise enough to appreciate your success better the second time around.

That wisdom is really important — so important that I should probably let it be the subject of some future post.

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Brent Hartinger is a screenwriter and author. Check out his other newsletter about his travels at BrentAndMichaelAreGoingPlaces.com.