Any wannabe science fiction writer, like myself, who reads the chapters in Isaac Asimov’s autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, describing his first story submissions in 1938 and his first story sales can fail to become excited and envious. In past years, I read those chapters and imagined myself selling my first stories. It was like imagining my first solo flight, only somehow more exciting. This is the first year that I’ve read the book, having already sold my first story and I headed into those chapters this evening with some trepidation. Would the thrill be gone?
I needn’t have feared. I read those chapters and was even more excited and envious than ever before. You see, now that I’ve sold a story, I’ve proved to myself that I can do it. Now I want to do it again, and I want it to be a better story than the first one. I don’t see how it could be any less exciting than that first story sale, and that was made apparent to me this evening, when, as always in past years, I mentally cheered when Isaac received his first acceptance from Amazing Stories toward the end of 1938. A story sale represents a thrill of victory each time it happens, and I could see becoming easily addicted to the feeling that such a thrill brings.
RSS - Posts