posted
This is a question who has run in my head since around one year : In what period and circumstances one man or woman become a professional writer. I know there are some writers here, especially I heard about a certain Orson SC .
So can you describe, hatrackers writers, how it has happened ?
posted
Before I answer let me point out that I'm "professional" in that I've been paid to write a few things, but not in the sense that I support myself on my writing. Yet. The story of my first professional publication is kind of fun though, so here goes.
I'd always liked writing stories, but they were typically for classes or just things I shared with my friends or on my webpage. I also like Dungeons and Dragons. A few years back, when 3rd ed D&D came out under the Open Gaming License, Sword & Sorcery Studios pulled off a minor coup by getting their Creature Collection book out before the official WotC Monster Manual. They had some interesting stuff in there so I checked out their website periodically and picked up the other book they released a bit later, Relics & Rituals. The important thing is that these books were full of monsters and spells that could be used in any campaign setting, but their flavor was all written for the Scarred Lands setting that Sword & Sorcery Studios was developing.
One day I noticed an announcement on their webpage that the open call deadline was being extended two weeks. I thought "What open call?" and looked around for more info. It turned out that they were looking for short stories set in their Scarred Lands world, ideally incorporating monsters and/or magic from the two sourcebooks previously mentioned. I was intrigued, but the original notice was from a few months ago so I'd only have two weeks (the extension alone) to write something that would compete with stories people may have worked on for months.
Fortunately, I was unemployed at the time and said "Why not?" I put my job hunt on pause and started looking for a story idea. Pressed for time, I used a "rescuing the damsel in distress" story I'd wrote in high school as the very, very rough starting point, changed the villains to Scarred Lands rat-people and decided to make the whole thing about twisting a standard D&D-adventure style plotline on its head. I finished a 8000-word story that doesn't at all resemble the one I started out basing it on within the two weeks, including a day or two for some friends to read through and help with editing.
It then took months of waiting, to the point where I'd nearly forgotten about the whole thing. One night I checked my email and shrieked with glee to see my story had been selected for the anthology. There's little like that elation of acceptance. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face for days, and walked around feeling like I wasn't even touching the floor.
I got paid four cents a word. This was actually only my third or so submission anywhere, so I was published without accrueing the usual huge stack of rejection letters. (Those have since come for other projects I've tried to get published.) The anthology is available here.
--Enigmatic (didn't get paid by the word for this post, more's the pity)
Posts: 2715 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Heh. My first professional gig (and most subsequent ones) was for White Wolf Game Studio, as well (the parent company of Sword and Sorcery).
I had played mostly WW games in college (Werewolf and Changeling, really), and I liked how their games were more story-centered and less dice-centered. I had heard about an editing and development internship for WW from a friend who frequents their website, and I thought I'd apply for it.
This was in 2001, the same time when I attended OSC's Literary Boot Camp, where, coincidentally enough, I met a woman whose husband knew and worked with the president of the company. She said that she'd have him put in a good word, and *poof!* I got the internship for that fall.
It was unpaid and it was in Atlanta, but I was waiting tables and bartending at the time and never turned down the opportunity to travel. I worked for 3 months on *shudder* their Exalted game line as a line editor, when I finally decided I was losing too much money and discovered there were no job openings at any time soon in the company.
On my last day, one of the developers I was friendly with asked if I'd be able to write 10,000 words about Werewolves in the Dark Ages, specifically on spirits, totems, and other were-critters of the time. I jumped at it.
When DA: Werewolf was finished, I got called to work on a Dark Ages supplement for their Vampire line (which I'd never played before). But, 20k words this time.
This rolled into a 35k stint on another Vampire supplement, and then a 30k stint on their Dark Ages Fae line, and so on and so forth up through the new rebranding of their Vampire and Werewolf lines.
So, I guess my start came through knowing and being friendly with the right people. As is so often the case in the world.
Posts: 3960 | Registered: Jul 2001
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