Fame, fortune and glory. Something that every writer dreams of, but no one is quite sure what being “famous” actually entails. Do you know who Robert Bloch is? How about Leigh Brackett or C.L. Moore? Each of these prolific writers hit it “big”: Bloch wrote the horror fiction that the movie Psycho was based on, Leigh Brackett wrote the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, and C.L. Moore’s groundbreaking contributions to fantasy and science fiction earned her the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Being a writer means that we have to continually remind ourselves why we write; to the fickle public it never matters “what” we’ve done. It always seems to be “when” we do it that counts. I’ll never forget the first time I joined a community of writers. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I was enthusiastic about how far I’d go as a writer and was eager to share ideas with other writers like myself. Then, I got told off by a very snarky writer who had written two books over 10 years ago–that I wasn’t a “real” writer because, at the time, I had zero “paid” credits to my name. To him, he was the “expert” because he had been published before and had gotten paid for it–but he was also bitter. Very bitter.

It’s easy for us to sit back and laugh at writers like this. Unfortunately, we are those writers. In 50 years, who will be remembered? Stephen King? Probably. You? Me? Probably not–yet.
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