How Long Does It Take to Get Published?

I’ve been looking at my submission stats so far and wanted something to compare them to, so I dug around a little and came up with the experiences of these three science fiction authors (this is just based on a cursory look at their blogs--I may have understood some of the numbers incorrectly):

John Scalzi (soon-to-be-former SFWA President, 9 novels and some novellas, short stories, etc.): Started writing science fiction at age 28, contract signed for debut novel at 33, debut novel published at 35, won John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at age 37 (see full timeline here).

Jamie Todd Reuben (8 short stories): Decided to become a professional science fiction writer at age 21, first story accepted for publication at age 34, second professional story accepted at age 37, third professional story accepted at age 38.  Altogether, “14 years, 30 stories, and nearly 100 rejections before [his] first story sale (see full timeline here).

Tobias S. Buckell (50 short stories, 7 novels): No age timeline, but in an essay wrote, “my own record is 24 rejections before selling a single story,” and “I have over 650 rejections logged in my files” (see full essay here).

So, obviously, it would be kind of hard to make any specific generalizations about how long it takes to become a professional writer based on this small, nonrandom, anecdotal sample, but it does give you a soft feel for what may be typical.  Dozens to hundreds of rejections over several years or even decades….  Since I started writing in November, I guess I should plan on seeing some success around 2017.

How to Start Writing Fiction

Okay, so on the topic of beginning writers, I thought I'd devote a post to how I got started.  I'm planning on devoting some time to statistics (number of stories, number of submissions, number of journals submitted to, etc.) later, but for now this is purely anecdotal.

In November of last year (2012), I was listening to NPR on my way to work on the 4th or 5th of the month, and I heard a story about NaNoWriMo.  Totally on a whim, I decided to do it, even though I had already missed a few days, and I had never written fiction before (aside from a school project in like 4th grade).  Fortunately, I had some down time, and I figured -- why not?  So I seriously just opened up a Word document on my laptop and started writing the first thing that came to my mind, and then I kept going, writing almost every day, and I had made it to almost exactly 50,000 (a couple of words over) when I finally wrote THE END on the last day of the month.  I was proud of myself for having "won," and I was surprised at how much I had enjoyed it.

When I first decided to do NaNoWriMo, I had figured I'd get bored with it and stop writing after I finished the contest, but it never happened, so I just kept writing.  I even started thinking about ideas for stories on my drives to/from work, and I would write them down on my breaks.  I actually had a short story submitted to a magazine before I even finished NaNoWriMo.

My writing has ebbed and flowed in the six months since I submitted that first story, but my interest hasn't waned a bit.  So now the trick is getting published.  More on that later, but as obvious as it sounds, for me the trick to getting started as a writer was just a matter of starting to write.