Last Friday, my sister's high school basketball team (she's the coach) played in the first round of the state tournaments in their division. The team did well during the first three periods by first maintaining an even score with their opponent (the defending state championships) and then pulling ahead.

In the fourth period, the opposing team pushed back with a full-court defensive press and an aggressive offense, and pulled ahead of us. Meanwhile, our girls were struggling to defend a team that had, during the first three-quarters of the game, played a much more mild-mannered game.

At about that point, my niece, who was sitting next to me, explained what was going on on the floor, how the lack of refereeing was allowing the opposing team to "wail" on our team and play a very frantic, frenetic offense/defense, and that our team was trying to compensate by going in the wrong direction. "We have to play our game, not theirs," my niece said, with quite a bit of frustration edging her voice.

What she said stuck in my head: Play your game.

It's sound advice not just for what was happening on the basketball court, but for a wider purpose.

Over the past few years, since becoming a fiction writer, I've read hundreds (if not thousands) of blog posts, articles, and books directed at writers on everything from crafting the perfect hook to marketing on Twitter. The message is clear: If you do this (whatever this is), you'll succeed as a writer.

The problem is that no two writers' careers are the same, nor do any two writers define success in the same way. Often, when a beginning writer tries to emulate someone else's success using the "formula" said successful writer proposed, it doesn't work. The beginning writer then becomes frustrated and discouraged. "I did exactly what they said to do!" these writers say. "Why didn't it work for me?"

I'm guilty of doing the same. After the release of The Choosing (Lucy Varna), my most successful book to date, I decided to take Big Name Author's advice (advice that's often touted as the way to work by many, many other writers) and rearrange my schedule and writing process. Having tasted a bit of success, I wanted to do everything in my power to maintain that success. So I shifted from working at night to working during the day. I stopped writing the stories that really moved me and began focusing instead on writing stories in one (and only one) series, sequentially with no side trips through other story worlds.

Know what happened? My writing output plummeted, my stories became much weaker (and reader reviews reflected that). In short, I completely screwed up everything that had been working for me because I took the wrong advice to heart.

Just like our team did when faced with a shifting sea on the basketball court, I started playing someone else's game and I lost.

It was one of the biggest mistakes of my career, and believe me, I've made some doozies.

Unfortunately, mistakes have a way of compounding. Once my productivity began to plummet, my stories began gathering negative reviews instead of the glowing reviews I was used to (and spoiled by), and my income took a nosedive, I began second-guessing myself. Ultimately, I lost confidence in my own ability to write, and I've struggled for years to get back to the point I was at when I released The Choosing in 2015.

But there's more to the story than that.

I was born into a highly competitive family. Imagine the most competitive person you know and double that. No, triple that. Maybe, possibly, you'll come close to understanding how competitive my family really is.

My siblings and I were raised playing competitive board and card games, and many of my family members played more than one sport, usually through high school, some into college. The competitiveness doesn't stop there. Every word must be watched because we're all looking for a way to getcha. It's all good fun (we almost never get really mean), but it's enough that I'm very careful not to date men who can't hold their own.

Just as an example, my cousin Lane brought her boyfriend up to meet us a couple of summers ago. When he confessed to my father that he wasn't a competitive person, my dad looked at him, laughed, and said, "Son, we're going to eat your lunch."

And he was right.

Now here's the thing, though: I'm not a very competitive person, especially when compared to the rest of my family. When Mom did in 2009, I was happy to escape the card table for the kitchen. Maybe ecstatic is a better word. The pressure of trying to remain competitive when you're playing against people for whom winning is a way of life is unbelievable. Though I love to play games, I never wanted that kind of stress.

I mean, seriously. When my sister's kids were young, she would ask them, "How do you spell fun?" Their answer? "W-i-n."

I'm not kidding. Expectations of success run high in my family. Spartan mothers used to tell their sons to "come home [from battle] carrying your shield or upon it." That's my family to a tee.

A couple of years ago, I was cooking a big meal for my family, one of our frequent get-togethers. At that point in my life, I was in the middle of trying to bounce back from a really bad career decision and another traumatic event that happened around the same time. Out of the blue, my sister looked up at me and said, "You're just not very driven, are you?"

I was flabbergasted. Seriously. You can't be a self-published writer (or truthfully a professional writer of any kind) without having a lot of drive and ambition fueling your creativity. As of today, I've published seventy-four pieces of fiction (from short poems to massive novels and omnibuses), hundreds of blog posts, three non-fiction books, and a couple dozen non-fiction articles. Additionally, my stories have garnered three spots as finalists in writing contests, which isn't easy at all. My career is young, yes, but no one could objectively say that I'm not driven.

My family, on the other hand, only sees that I am the quietest, least competitive, and least financially successful member of the family. To them, that equals a lack of drive.

I've been fighting against that attitude, internally and otherwise, for years.

The thing is that I've honestly tried to measure up to my family's ideal of success. Every time I have, though, I've muddled it up royally. I learned a long time ago that I would get nowhere by playing their game. I'm not the same kind of competitive that they are; yes, I'm ambitious, driven, and goal-oriented, but not their kind of ambitious, driven, and goal-oriented.

I stopped playing their game, even though I've caught a lot of flak for it over the years, and still do every single time I sit down with my father.

In spite of the censure from my family, I learned to play my game, which is why my willingness to turn my entire process on its head for a slim shot at a different kind of success is so baffling to me. It's not a mistake I'll repeat again, though, at least not in the same way. Writers have to experiment in order to understand what works and doesn't work for them.

We also have to discard what doesn't work rather than trying to hold on to it just because Big Successful Author does it that way, or because readers are pressuring us to write XYZ story, or...

Believe me when I say that I receive all sorts of pressure to conform to others' ideals of how, when, and on what I should be working and living. Here are just a few things I've heard over the past few months:

"You really need to stop working at night. It's so bad for you. Why can't you work during the day like everyone else?"

"You should write a werewolf sequel to the Vampyr Series." Also, "Why won't you write more books in the Vampyr Series?" (Just FYI, I'm discarding that pen name.)

"Why do you spend so much time in Greenville? Why don't you move back home [where I grew up]?" Accompanied by eye rolls and grunts of disapproval.

"Have you finished that best-selling novel yet?" Wink, nudge, hehe.

And so on. In short, the exact same kind of nonsense that most non-conforming people receive when they define their own path, tailored to my profession and life choices.

But guess what? The most successful people have always gone their own way. Two words: Elon Musk. Need I say more?

So here's my advice, and this is advice you can use no matter who you are or how you define success: Don't let other people pressure you into playing their game. When it feels like you're being attacked on all sides, step back, take a deep breath, and calmly continue doing what feels right to you.

Play your game.

It's your life, after all. No one else can live it for you.