gwynnega

Today I went to Dark Delicacies Bookstore in Burbank for a BPAL in-store. Scents I bought: Gelt, The Rose, and Sugar Cookie, plus Proserpina bath oil. This weekend I've also worked on chapter ten (and will do more this evening) and rewatched Tootsie (for novel research). My novel research viewing for the Jo book is such an odd melange of soap opera/acting stuff and political violence/war stuff.

From

fairmer and

matociquala and others, that writing/publishing meme!

* Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer:
Eight (when I visited Louisa May Alcott's house)

* Age when I "wrote" my first story:
Probably around five years old. My dad (a screenwriter) used to tape-record me telling little stories when I was tiny.

* Age when I got my hands on a typewriter:
Probably about 10. For awhile I had a portable manual typewriter, and I also used my dad's electric.

* Age when I completed my first novel:
18

* Novels written between age 4 and age 34:
4

* Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine:
Mid 20s, I think (though I had a story published in an anthology long before I had one in a magazine). I started writing short stories much later than I started writing novels and poetry.

* Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale:
Tons of novel and poem rejections, but not many short story rejections.

* Age when I sold my first short story:
26

* Age when I first came close to selling a novel:
Come to think of it, I came close to selling my second novel when I was 19 or 20, but it didn't come to fruition.

* Age when I killed my first market:
about 28, I think.

*Approximate number of short stories/novelettes/novellas sold for cash money:
6. If you include autobiographical essays, that makes 9.

* Age when I was first told I had no talent (by an editor):
Hasn't happened, thank god!

* Age I was first told I had no talent (by a reader):
I don't think that's happened either.

* Age when I first sold a non-fiction book:
I haven't written a nonfiction book. I have sold a lot of music reviews/interviews/features.

* Age when I first sold a poem:
I was 36 when I first sold a poem for cash money (as opposed to the poems I've had published in literary journals, which mostly don't pay). Unfortunately, the publication was in Australia and sent me a check in Australian money, which I wasn't able to easily negotiate! (It wasn't enough money to be worth the effort.)

* Poems sold for cash money: 5

* Age when I first wrote a saleable novel:
Assuming "Eleanor Bell" sells, I finished it at age 41 (but made a few more little changes to it this year).

* Age when that novel was published:
We'll see...

Total number of novels written (discounting juvenilia): 6. (Seven if you count the one I'm revising now.)

*Age when I got an agent:
43

* Age when the second saleable novel finally sold:
Skipping right along...

* Age when a work was first shortlisted for a Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy or Stoker award: Skipping...

Also skipping:
* Age when the second saleable novel came out:
* Age when the third saleable novel came out:
* Age when the fourth saleable novel came out:
* Age when I first won a Hugo award:
* Age when I finally shut down the day-job and became a full-time novelist:
* Age when the money coming in matched/exceeded my previous employment:
* Age when I returned to the day-job because of economic implosion:

* Age now: 43

And skipping:
* Number of books sold:
* Number of titles in print:
* Number of titles fallen out of print:

A lot of these questions were hard for me to reconstruct. Until the past year my publishing history included lots of literary journals (i.e., lots of "acceptances" as opposed to "sales"!).

*Consider this an LJ-meme: if you write professionally, feel free to post your own equivalent of this list. (Obviously you'll need to customize it to track your career path -- but you get the idea.)*