“A journey of a thousand Hugos begins with a single fan.”
When you’re sitting in your chair for years on end, sweating out story after story, trying to bear up under the weight of repeated rejections, wondering–and sometimes despondent–about your chances of ever becoming a published author, you dream of that (far-off?) day when you will open your email and find that Golden Ticket, a magical missive from an editor that says, “Thank you for sending us ‘My Fantastic Story.’ We would very much like to publish it.” And when you’re not having that dream, you’re having the other one, the one where you are a successful author with a bookshelf full of published work, a trophy or two on the mantel, a full-time writer making his living lying to people.
What you don’t realize then, as you’re thrilling to that first hypothetical sale and then basking in future glories, is the vast gulf that lies between the two extremes. It is true, of course, that for a select and fortunate few, that gulf does not exist, but this essay is not about them (and they have other problems anyway. So there, you “overnight successes” whose decades-long struggles nobody saw.)
Not being what you’d call bestseller material, most of my writer friends are swimming through that same gulf that I am. Quite a few are further ahead, some have novels out with major publishers, some are even award-winners. But nobody I’m personally acquainted with is so high in the pantheon not to remember what it was like to be dreaming of the least crumb of success that is the first step on the ladder–or the riches of bestsellerdom.
When you taste that crumb, that’s when you begin to appreciate the size of that gulf. It doesn’t help that you can’t see the other side (even if it’s at your feet). But there are signposts. For example, I have managed to wangle my way onto a few panels at a local convention, and when the World Fantasy Convention was local to me a while back, I used that experience to get on a panel. At the World Fantasy Convention. We’re talking big-time! And after one of my panels, a couple of fans approached and asked me for autographs.
At WFC, part of being panelist is that they have a mass autograph session, and you can plunk yourself behind a placard holding a pen, and await the eager hordes of fans desperate to score your autograph. So, emboldened, I threw my hat into the WFC ring, found my name at my table, and sat my butt down like I do most nights except this time instead of writing long passages of soon-to-be-edited fiction, I’d be scribbling my name and a few choice salutary bits, smiling a lot, and doing it all over again for the next happy fan.
Well, yeah, that’s the idea. And I was absolutely correct when I foresaw my role, except for the “fans” part. There were none. Didn’t sign a single book. I still enjoyed myself; the con brought refreshments to the authors, and I was treated just like everyone else, so that was cool. But no autographs.
I was reminded of that today by a fellow writer who had an author meet-and-greet at a con, and no one came. Kind of surprising, because that author’s a lot better known than I am. But there you have it. That’s some gulf.
I’m not a best-seller. I may never be one. The gulf stretches ahead of me and I still can’t see a thing. But I’m trying my best not to be discouraged. After all, a few people have asked for my autograph, I’m still selling stories, and most of all, I can remember what it was like when I didn’t know how wide that gulf was, or the doubts and fears that go with being a small-time author instead of a “pending” one. I remember dreaming those dreams.
And I’ve already seen one come true.
#SFWApro
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