Author James Van Pelt recently sold his one-hundredth short story. Here, he takes a look back and shares with us the things he’s learned along the way.

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When I was a kid, I dreamed a bunch about being an adult, about being big and accomplished and competent.  While my friends talked about being action/adventure heroes, though, I dreamed about being a writer.  The idea that there could be books in the world with my name on them?  Wow!

What’s been exciting is that in many ways, I have fulfilled my dreams.  At least I hit that important milestone for me of publishing a book.

One way of evaluating a writing career is by noting the milestones: the first completed story, the first professional critique, the first submission, the first rejection (and second and third and . . . you know how it goes), the first acceptance, etc.  Milestones mark the writer’s life.

For me, I just reached a significant one: I sold my 100^th story.  To get to it, I had to start twenty-one years ago, in 1990, when, after eight years of collecting rejections, I made my first short story sale.  The editor of a little magazine, After Hours, phoned me to say he liked my story, but none of it took place at night, a requirement for stories in his magazine.  Could I please make some part of the story take place at night?  I changed one sentence, and the sale happened.  I was now a published writer, a huge milestone.

If  you would have told me in 1990, after I made that first sale, that lightning would strike me 99 more times, including sales to Analog, Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales and many others; and that my stories would appear in several “year’s best” anthologies; that I would have been a finalist for a Nebula; that I would have the stories assembled in three collections; and that after 100 sales I would still feel like a newbie, I would have laughed in your face.

One-hundred sales sounded more science fictional to me than any science fiction idea I ever wrote.

So, what has 100 sales taught me?

• Nothing beats opening up a new file on the computer, putting my name and address on the upper left hand corner, spacing to the middle of the page, and then pausing to consider the title for the new, unwritten story.
• Almost every story I’ve written has started with the feeling that the idea was inconsequential, and the only reason I was writing it was that I wanted to be working until a really good idea came along.
• At some point in every story, I’ve told my wife, “I don’t know what the heck this piece is.  It’s weird and I don’t know how to write it.”
• All my stories sound better in my head when I’m in the shower thinking about where to go next with them.
• Story writing is about discovery for me: both discovering what is going to happen next and discovering why the idea is important to me.
• Sometimes I think the only reason I write a story is so I can pile up enough words to justify being really lyrical for a paragraph.
• At some point in the writing of every story, I’m convinced it’s the best thing I’ve ever put down on paper.
• At some point in the writing of every story, I’m convinced I’ve never written worse dreck.

Along the way, I’ve also heard really good advice from other writers, publishers and editors:

• Long time editor, George Scithers wrote on a rejection letter, “I hope while you were waiting to hear about this story that you were writing your next.”
• I asked Connie Willis when she signed a book for me if she should would include her top three pieces of writing advice.  Her first one was, “Never kill the dog,” which I’ve interpreted to mean, “Don’t take cheap and easy emotional shortcuts.”
• James Patrick Kelly told me that the writing of his classic, “Think Like a Dinosaur,” didn’t feel any different to him than the next story he wrote which he was never able to sell.
• Ray Bradbury said, “If you are writing without zest, without gusto, without life, without fun, you are only half a writer.”
• I was on a panel with Terry Pratchett at WorldCon and he said, “Make sure your character doesn’t suffer from plucklessness.”  I’ve always liked that word, plucklessness.

But mostly what I’ve learned on the road to those 100 sales is that I was right when I was a little kid:  being a writer is very, very cool.

Writing gives me focus.  Whether I’m reading the news or watch a mini-drama unfold in the grocery store, or overhearing a too loud conversation, I think about story, about human interaction, and about significance.  Wherever I am, I think about description.  It’s practically a mantra with me: what can I see, hear, touch, taste and smell?  And whenever I construct anything with language, I’m aware of how sound effects sense, how connotation and denotation intertwine, and how words are metaphors.

Mostly, though, I’m blessed with the permission that all writers have: to close my eyes and imagine other people and worlds, to hear other conversations, and to live for a moment in someone else’s skin.

What being a writer has done for me is to let me remain a kid, where imagination holds its own with reality, and putting my nose to the grindstone means making it all up and pretending.

One-hundred story sales later, I’ve learned that it’s okay to dream, just like a kid.