{"id":692,"date":"2011-11-30T11:10:34","date_gmt":"2011-11-30T11:10:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=692"},"modified":"2011-11-30T11:10:34","modified_gmt":"2011-11-30T11:10:34","slug":"part-profession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/part-profession\/","title":{"rendered":"Part of the Profession"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Meet the newest Active member of the Science Fiction &#038; Fantasy Writers of America: me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.sfwa.org\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.graymanwrites.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/pix\/logos\/logosfwa.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\nIt&#8217;s nice to check that off the &#8220;writing career&#8221; list &#8212; <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First story sale &#8230; CHECK <em>(2007)<\/em><\/li>\n<li>First professional story sale &#8230; CHECK <em>(2010)<\/em><\/li>\n<li>SFWA qualification (3 pro stories or a novel) &#8230; CHECK<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n&#8212; especially as my entry into SFWA was a little unconventional. I originally joined as an Affiliate member, based on my work with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.baen.com\/\">Baen Books<\/a>, since I hadn&#8217;t yet made any qualifying sales of my fiction. Even my first professional-level story, &#8220;Memorial at Copernicus,&#8221; didn&#8217;t qualify me for Associate membership because <a href=\"http:\/\/redstonesciencefiction.com\/2010\/08\/redstonesciencefiction-03\/\">Redstone Science Fiction<\/a> was too new and had not yet been recognized as a professional market.<\/p>\n<p>Of all the professional organizations I&#8217;ve joined at various times in my life (e.g., Air Force Association, American Society for Quality Control [now just &#8216;ASQ&#8217;]) SFWA&#8217;s entrance qualifications were the hardest to meet. Now that they&#8217;ve let me in, I&#8217;m reminded of the Groucho Marx bit &#8212; wondering if I should be leery of joining a group that would have me as a member &#8212; especially as I feel more like a lucky hack than a professional. Maybe it&#8217;s something I have to live up to.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, this doesn&#8217;t mean much in the grand scheme of things. To paraphrase one of my parents&#8217; favorite sayings, to account for inflation and personal preference: that and a buck will buy me a diet soda.*<\/p>\n<p>So, on to the next thing: finishing the next story.<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n*Even though &#8220;That and 50 cents will buy you a cup of coffee&#8221; sounds better, since I don&#8217;t drink coffee I&#8217;m not sure how many places still sell it for 50 cents.<\/p>\n<a class=\"synved-social-button synved-social-button-share synved-social-size-24 synved-social-resolution-single synved-social-provider-facebook nolightbox\" data-provider=\"facebook\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\" title=\"Share on Facebook\" 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It&#8217;s nice to check that off the &#8220;writing career&#8221; list &#8212; First story sale &#8230; CHECK (2007) First professional story sale &#8230; CHECK (2010) SFWA qualification (3 pro stories or a novel) &#8230; CHECK &#8212; \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/part-profession\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[164,172,32],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-fantasy","tag-sfwa","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}