When you know you’ve made it – this is a question that I get a lot at various panels and workshops that I do. I know that it’s also something that several of my colleagues get asked often.
So how DO you know when you’ve “made it” in your chosen field or genre? This, just like the majority of the writing advice you’ll encounter online and offline is subjective. It depends on who you are asking and what they’re using as their goalposts.
It could be awards or recognition of your works at a national/international level, it could be when you’re invited to a convention or conference as a guest instead of program participant. Those are fairly common ones. So is making one of the NY Bestselling Lists. These goalposts can be huge or small – it all depends on the person(s) involved.
One of my dear friends, herself a fabulous author/blogger, has said that she’ll know she’s made it when someone comes up to her at a convention or signing dressed as one of her characters.
For me, personally, I grew up with fandom during the late 90’s/early 2000’s. The earliest LiveJournal posts I have were back in 2004 and I remember an Internet where finding fanfic meant toggling between locked Yahoo Groups, Fanfiction.net, Fiction Alley, and a thousand other Geocities or Angelfire websites. All of it depending on the fandoms you were in and the easiest way to find good fic was rec lists on Live Journal rec comms. Some fandoms had hundreds of thousands of fansites; others had two (maybe).
I am never-endingly thankful that Archive of Our Own (A03) exists is what I’m getting at here. And it ties into my own “made it” milestone. I will officially consider myself to have “made it” when there’s an A03 fandom tag for my works and it’s Yuletide eligible.
Everything else mentioned before would be awesome, don’t get me wrong. Winning a Hugo or Nebula would just blow my socks off, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Hitting a bestseller list would make me squee (high pitched dolphin noises) for weeks, if not months. Someone cosplaying as one of the characters in my stories would have me blinding people with the sunshiny smile on my face.
But to be Yuletide eligible and have an A03 fandom tag created for fanworks of my writing? That’s my gold standard right there.
So if you’re a writer/creator, what’s your “made it” moment? Share it in the comments if you like. I love hearing about them from other creatives.