Here's an interesting list on Daily or Not of career benchmarks for mass-market romance writers. I haven't hit very many of these, but the list totally fascinates me.
I wonder how different this list would be if composed by SF/F authors? Certainly one of the benchmarks would be "invited to be a guest of honor at a local convention" and then also, "invited to be a guest of honor at an 'away' con (all expenses paid)". Probably also we'd have to include qualifying for SFWA membership (and having your first verbal brawl on the pages of the SFWA Forum???).
For me, one of my big career markers included, "announcement of novel sale in Locus," "getting your picture in Locus," and (one I have yet to achieve) "being the featured interviewee in Locus," which is akin, IMHO, of "getting your picture on the cover of the The Rolling Stone."
What would some others be?
Addition: Here's Jay Lake's ruminations on the early career writer cycle which seemed approps And here's a direct link to the blog he was riffing on: Paul Jessup's The Newbie Writer Cycle.
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4 comments:
You beat me to the post button. I've got a long riff on a related topic that I'll post later today.
The short version is that this isn't how I think about career or benchmarks and neither Paul nor Jay are really coming at starting out from the direction I did.
Cool. I can't wait to read it.
We missed you at Wyrdsmiths last night.
Hey, you haven't got to many of those, but at least you're published. ;)
Would this be an appropriate time to mention that your alter ego's Archangel Protocol books are actually in my local library? Hope that doesn't bugger it and they grab them from there. :P
Cool that my books are in the library.
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