Beth Goder asked Mary Robinette Kowal:

I'm always curious about the career paths of writers. After you began writing, how long did it take you before you published a short story? How many stories did you submit before you became published?

Mary Robinette Kowal This is kind of tricky. I was writing when I was a kid and published stuff in the school literary magazine. I'm assuming though that you mean after I started doing this seriously, and when did I sell a story.

I had about a ten year gap where I really didn't write because I was getting my creative jollies through theater. I started again sometime in 2003 while my brother was in China with his kids. I wrote a serial for them, which turned into a novel. During the process of that, I remembered that I loved to write and started exploring getting better at it.

My first sale was in 2004 to a small press magazine called The First Line. I had five rejections before my first sale.

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