Validation Decay

I could really use a win right now

Here’s the scenario: You’re a writer. You write things, you send them out. Mostly you are used to the fact that this is fruitless and no one is paying any attention to you.

But then—something good happens! Something you wrote gets picked up! People say nice things about it! And you sit back down at your writing desk with the warm feeling that it was all worth it all along, and really it’s not about the destination but the journey, and what matters is love of the craft. And you keep writing diligently and happily.

And you keep writing. And you keep writing. And it turns out that ever since that brief fizzle of attention way back when, no one is really paying any more attention to you than they did before. And though you can still remember that nice, warm, secure feeling you had when the good thing happened, you don’t really feel it anymore.

In fact, what you feel is: distressed. Abandoned. Ignored. Hello, you shout, I’m still out here, diligently writing, just like I was when the last good thing happened! Shouldn’t I be due for another one?

If you’re anything like me, you’ll then start ruminating on how you could really use another win right now, and how long it’s been since your last win, and how maybe you’ll never get another one.

And if you’re quite a lot like me, you’ll start making backroom deals with the universe. “I’ll do that thing I’ve been putting off for six months if it means that editor will get back to me! I won’t check my email for two hours and then the email will be there!” The universe reneges on all of these backroom deals, and so, nobody’s fool, you stop holding up your end of the bargain, and then nothing at all gets done except waiting: waiting for a win.

External validation is rare in the writing world—we know this—a lot of our work happens alone at a desk, and a lot of our pages end up crumpled in the wastebasket. We don’t expect to be showered with praise and attention. When we get any sliver of external validation at all, we ought to be grateful. And we are grateful! It’s thrilling! But that validation turns out to have an amazingly short half-life.

A piece of good news that should have kept you going for months instead wears out its novelty two weeks in. A huge win that all your friends and rivals are still congratulating you on feels not only irrelevant but somehow embarrassing. “Oh, that old thing? Sure, I guess at the time that was kind of a victory.”

External validation can’t just hold still and stay pleasant—it starts mutating almost immediately into a source of anxiety (what if this gets taken away from me), or shame (what if it’s pathetic to even be excited about this), or threat (what if I never outdo this all the rest of my career).

The only cure you can think of when you’re in this state is, of course, more validation. If only something really good would happen right: now. That would solve everything! But another dose of validation will only postpone the problem, and when it wears off (which will happen even sooner than last time), you’ll be just as fidgety and woebegone as before.

This phenomenon is known¹ as Validation Decay. I would wager, with no basis in research, that Validation Decay is something every writer has to come to terms with. The high of publication; the low of sales. The high of acceptance; the low of reception. The high of “I loved your second book!!”; the low of “I wasn’t too keen on books 3-12, though.”

We all deal with it. It’s not fun. It’s not helpful. It doesn’t make us particularly gracious or even-keeled.

What can we do about it?

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This is the part of the post where I’m supposed to pivot to giving advice. But, as might already be obvious, Validation Decay is something I really struggle with. I’ve had some significant wins in my writing career this year, and I’ve turned them all into sources of angst at speeds that would make your head spin.

• Novel sells to publisher → feel insecure about size of advance

• Essay gets accepted by good journal → feel haunted by how hard essay was to write and how maybe I can never write another one

• [secret thing I can’t disclose] → shouldn’t there be more secret things I can’t disclose happening???

So the advice I have to offer today is basically just a list of Things I’ve Been Trying. If you are a validation fiend like me, I hope that some of them are helpful to you.

5 Weird Tricks to Prevent Validation Decay

1. Really insistently force yourself to celebrate the wins when they happen.

It can feel embarrassing to celebrate good news as a writer. Maybe you’re a stage or two behind your cohort of writer friends, and it feels weird to celebrate something so small as a short story acceptance when they’re getting longlisted for the Booker. Maybe you’re ahead of your cohort, and you don’t want to trumpet about your multi-million-dollar Hollywood deal when they’re still finishing their novels. Maybe you’re exactly even with your cohort and they all wish you ill.

Whatever the reason, it is irrelevant and should be ignored. You need to celebrate the hell out of this win. Every time you stop thinking about it, you need to jolt yourself back to thinking about it. Bask in the good feeling for as long as you possibly can. It’s not going to come back—it’s going to mutate into stress before you know it. Do not put off the celebration until some later date. Celebrate now!

2. Make lists.

Whenever I find myself in the Validation Pit, fixating on the good things I want that I can’t seem to get, I’ll sit down with a notebook and list out all the kinds of validation I’m hungry for. Publish that story, place that review, hear back from that contact, get encouraging feedback on that work-in-progress.

Then I flip back to the lists I made last time I was in the Validation Pit. I see how, six months ago, what I desperately wanted above all else was to publish a single book review. Now I have published three book reviews. Shouldn’t I be happier? Yes, I should be happier! And then I feel a little bit happier.

This is basically a way to fix the goalposts in place. Even though you want Bigger Validation now, don’t forget how you yearned for Smaller Validation not that long ago. Did you get Smaller Validation? Did you bypass it entirely? Celebrate that too.

3. Chase effort, not outcome.

In 2024, I had eight short stories accepted for publication. Eight! That’s a lot!

In 2025, I have had zero short stories accepted for publication.

If I’m judging the health of my writing career by number of short story publications, I’m in a bad way. I’ve plummeted from Very Successful to Absolutely Worthless.

Luckily, I have trained myself to judge the health of my writing career by the amount of effort I put in, not the amount of external validation I collect.

In 2024, my goal (my New Year’s resolution in fact) was to get 25 kind rejections on my short story submissions. Which I did. Check! I actually overshot it a little. By that metric, 2024 was a success.

In 2025, my resolution was to get 50 kind rejections. I’m currently at 42/50. Feeling hopeful that I’ll eke this one out. 2025 is already a much greater success than 2024.

This rewiring of my brain has been so effective that I was surprised, counting up rejections and acceptances last month, to discover that I hadn’t placed any new stories this year. It felt like I’d been doing pretty well—my rejections were steadily climbing, and that’s always a good sign! And so even though I was slightly miffed to realize that my publication record this year was 0/lots, it didn’t bring me down all that much. I knew I’d put in the work.

External validation is so thoroughly outside our control that if we measure success only by that metric, our self-esteem will be at the mercy of the cruel and inscrutable publishing gods. Find some way to quantify the work you’re putting in, and use that to evaluate how your writing career is going. Validation decays, but effort accrues.

4. Enjoy writing unconditionally.

Hopefully, if you are a writer, you enjoy writing—the act of writing, not the payoff.

If you’re writing your novel thinking, “As long as this novel sells for big money, I’ll be glad to have written it!”, you are in trouble. A good outcome is never guaranteed, and even if you get that good outcome, the pleasure you take in the work will be retroactively determined by the magnitude of the outcome. Will a low advance make you less pleased with what you wrote? Will a huge advance make up for the years you spent gritting your teeth and forcing yourself back into the work?

I think it’s always a mistake to hook present enjoyment to future success. It’s the same mistake that people make when they say, “I’m going to really enjoy this romantic relationship once we stop arguing all the time!” If you’re not happy now, projections of future happiness can’t drag your mood upward.

This week, I sent out a couple essay pitches that I am certain no one will want. But I had so much fun writing them that I kind of don’t care what happens to them. If, by some miracle, a magazine picks up either of these pitches, it will be a brand-new pleasure—it won’t change, for better or worse, the way I felt when I was drafting them.

5. Talk to people.

I recently went out to dinner with a few writing friends. One of them was frustrated: he’d come really, really close to placing a piece with Harper’s, and then they had turned it down in the end.

“That’s amazing!” said the other writing friend. “Congratulations! They don’t even write most people back!”

Friends are one of the best ways to prevent Validation Decay. They’ll celebrate your successes long after you’re numb to them; they’ll remind you of how far your goalposts have shifted; they’ll help you keep perspective on how you define validation. When you’re deep in the Validation Pit, they’ll kindly point out that two weeks ago, something really good happened that you were really happy about. Shouldn’t you maybe still be happy about it?

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Was that helpful? I hope that was helpful. The moment I finished writing the last paragraph, I opened a new tab to check my email to see if any external validation had come in while I was occupied. (None had.) So: I’m not exactly cured.

But now my relentless craving for external validation, and the frustrating phenomenon by which good news means less to me with every passing day, at least has a name. And maybe now that I’ve named it, I can keep an eye out for it, and trust it a little less when it comes.

Anyone else out there in the Validation Pit? I see you—I salute you!

Thank you, as ever, for indulging me.

1. Known by me. I just coined it.