I’ve mainly been reading biographies these days.

I originally hoped that this departure from my standard literary diet of non-fiction psychology books (or “self-help” as my friends like to call it) would be entertaining and interesting enough to reinvigorate my (recently waning) love for reading.

I expected that the arcs towards success (in the lives of those biographed) would be obvious.

That each step would be a carefully choreographed movement in their respective dances towards greatness.

Well.

I was wrong.

And as someone who (so far) has lived a life that is not obviously arcing toward greatness, I’ve found (a non-trivial amount of) solace in that.

For example, I had assumed Benjamin Franklin’s life consisted of a slow and steady march towards notoriety as an eminent tinkerer and the essential American patriot.

And that Steve Jobs consistently chipped away at cementing his name as one of the most iconic founders in history.

And that Stephen King spent his entire adult life churning out hit novel after hit novel en route to becoming recognized as one of the most prolific writers of his generation.

But apparently, life doesn’t work like that.

Before Benjamin Franklin was a revered diplomat, he spent most of his time in the printing and postal businesses. And only a few years before he signed his name on the Declaration of Independence (and later the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution), he was known more widely as a traitor than a conciliator (in both America and Britain).

Before Steve Jobs was the CEO of Apple, he was a college dropout, hitchhiking across India, and upon return to the Bay Area, a night-shift technician at the video game maker Atari. And only a few years before the iMac sold 6 million units (making it the best-selling computer to date), Jobs was running two failing companies that he had put almost all of his life’s savings into. And this, of course, was all only a few years after he got ousted from Apple — the company he had founded less than a decade earlier.

Before Stephen King filled bookstore shelves with his best-selling novels, he was a high school English teacher making $6k a year, writing at nights in his trailer home in Maine. And only a few months before he got his first book deal for Carrie (worth $400k — the equivalent of 67 more years spent at his teaching job), the first draft of Carrie was sitting in the garbage. King’s wife happened to stumble upon it, dust off the cigarette ashes, and encourage him to give it another go.

Sure, there’s luck involved in all of these stories.

But as Picasso (allegedly) said, “luck will find you, but it has to find you working.”

Greatness is not inevitable. But it also isn’t random.

For every Stephen King, there are surely thousands of aspiring writers who are still writing at nights and on the weekends, waiting for their big break.

But there are also probably thousands of aspiring writers who aren’t writing at all.