So, anyway, I was teaching a class of upper-intermediate ESL teenagers the other day and I asked them what they wanted to be when they grew up. I got the usual doctor and lawyer answers, the admirable desire to help people and make a difference. And as I paced and stroked my chin, I nodded and replied in an offhand, slightly despondent way: "Don't have any dreams, kids. They won't come true. Expect nothing and you will never be disappointed. Just mindlessly pursue hedonism or become catatonic instead. And if you resolutely refuse to develop the slightest shred of a dream you might - you just might - sidestep the soul-piercing agony of failure. Now, let's weep, children, let's weep for my blighted existence as I blindly flounder in this giant playground of the broken heart."

For a few moments, silence reigned in the classroom as my students' unlined faces, so rich with promise, remained fixed on me. And as a teardrop snaked down one of my battered cheeks, they blinked, turned to each other and gently struck up conversations, obviously helping each other interpret my heartfelt plea. Then they nodded, stood as one, clambered onto their desks as sunlight flooded into the room and proclaimed: "O Captain! My Captain!"

Well, all right, that's not an entirely factual account of one of my lessons last week but I did touch upon the nature of dreams and success. And it got me thinking about my confessional outburst. Why did I tell those kids I was a failure? Perhaps it has something to do with believing that the book-buying public will stamp on my face for the rest of eternity, but I guess it's also connected to living in a society where instant gratification and fantastic results are expected, if not demanded. We are constantly reminded of successful people and we want to be the same as them, you know, like tomorrow. Or in five minutes. It's all part of the undignified, head-fucking scramble to stand out from the crowd.

But to avoid those traps of envy and depression, perhaps it's important to break 'success' up into achievable chunks. For some writers simply completing a novel in the first place can seem like the very definition of success. And as I sit here, naked and smeared in my lucky chicken grease with tears of blood dripping onto my utterly stalled sixth book, I can testify that yes, just finishing the bastard thing would qualify as a resounding success. So, there you go, one form of 'success' can be measured along the lines of mastering something you find incredibly difficult, frustrating and intimidating. You know, licking the bitch into shape.

Now you're ready for the next step which - you'll be pleased to know - isn't easy either. You've got to convince the world you've given birth to a beautiful, blue-eyed baby rather than a two-headed, asthmatic spaz that's already cacked its pants. In other words, you've got to sell it.

Every novelist wants to sell in Dan Brown-like numbers and if they tell you they're much more interested in critical respect, just laugh and maybe slap them. But if you go through the pain of the creative process and you don't sell in big numbers then it's hard not to come to the conclusion you've failed. And after 22 years of writing novels, my five titles don't really sell. They kind of lie there, forlorn and unloved as if they've got some sort of disease. A bit like me, really.

So I must be a failure. Right? But again, it's important to take stock and not start traipsing through the dingy streets in a hairshirt, ringing a little bell and bellowing "Unclean!" Remaining a smidgen outside the bestseller lists doesn't mean my books suck. The rational part of my brain will always try to remind me there's no tangible link between units shifted and quality. Let's face it, if that were the case then the best books of the last few years would be Twilight, Da Vinci Code and Fifty Shades of Grey. Of course, I'm sure there is someone who believes just that but I also suspect such an individual routinely self-harms aboard a spaceship piloted by Princess Di. No, success should never be measured by sales alone.

And anyway, my books do sell. In teeny-weeny numbers. Month in, month out. Shit, last month's sales were impressive enough to almost buy a couple of Mars bars. And every sale is a triumph. Let me repeat that. Every sale is a triumph. After all, whatever book that has been bought (which is now an entity being caressed in a reader's hands) used to be nothing more than a bunch of barely formed ideas stagnating in my head.

And if I stand back and think about it, it's amazing anyone even managed to find one of my books out of the millions available, let alone look at the blurb, take a peek inside, and choose to hand over their cold, hard cash. For when someone buys one of my sordid little efforts, they are putting their faith in me. They are silently whispering that I have the power to create a fascinating fictional world in which flesh and blood characters seamlessly interact. They believe I can stimulate and engage their imagination, that for a short while I will enrich their life. Every purchase is a nurturing act, even if the buyer simply wants profanity and a few tit jokes.

And with the arrival of the e-book revolution, I am now selling in America, Canada, the UK, Korea and other markets I could never have reached just a few years ago... This is success. No groupies, but still success. And so what if I have to laboriously remind myself of such a feeble fact by composing this self-indulgent twaddle on a blog no one reads? It's still success.

So what am I saying here? And how's it relevant to you? I dunno. Perhaps all I'm trying to say is 'success' can be measured as a series of baby steps. The stuff you do over a lifetime. Try not to fantasise about instantaneously arriving at an end result - the picture in the paper, the fans, the money, the three-in-a-bed with the Olsen twins - because the vast majority of us will never get there. Instead just concentrate on completing that first step. And stop giving yourself a hard time. Some things take a while. Oh boy, they can take such a long time.

The truth is I will never have Dan Brown's sales figures. We all know this. My books appeal to a niche crowd (ie slobbering blokey perverts) at best. I will never sit atop a huge pile of money laughing at my critics and the other sad fucks in the rat race. But I have written five novels, some people have bought them in a different country and some people even like them. In fact, I've never received a bad review from anyone who's actually paid for my little encyclopaedias of dysfunctionalism.

And so maybe I shouldn't have told my students to quit dreaming. Maybe I should've, er, encouraged them or something. Maybe it's feasible to claim some sort of success if you listen to your heart, plough through adversity and try to build something.

So whatever your dream is, don't give up. You must pursue it, step by step, and occasionally take stock of what you've achieved. Goddamn it, go and contribute and then wait for that wheel to turn. And OK, maybe it will only run straight over your foot but that's still better than being one of those people out there who do nothing but sneer, who attack and try to destroy. Please don't be one of them.

OK, kids?