I won Australia’s first national poetry slam contest, which caused the organizers of the Poetry International Festival to invite me to the Netherlands to participate in a global poetry slampionship with eight other national poetry slam champions. I then had two line items on my poetry resumé, which I’m sure contributed to the success of my application to be a Writer-in-Residence at the Tasmania Writers Centre.
The lesson I learned from all that was that one success leads to others. The first one is the hardest. Work hard for that one. Don’t be intimidated by people who have enjoyed a lot of success. Don’t dissociate yourself from them. Believe them when they say that they were once just like you.
Multiple successes start with just one. Believe you can do it. And go do it.