Fame! (When are you going to live forever?)

When perusing through these marvelous reimaginings of Roald Dahl works via one of Annie Cardi‘s wonderful linkdrop posts, I got to thinking, “What would the reimaginings of my covers be like?”

Promptly, I stopped myself to drop the reminder that one might need to have book covers in the first place before people can even begin to reimagine them. Still, it’s easy to get caught up in those fantasies of fame even well before you’d laid down the ground work. The real key is to ensure that you are attempting to take it beyond the fantasy, actually writing, actually publishing, and (as I’ve been neglecting an awful lot lately) actually promoting.

It did get me curious, though: what, to you, will be the standard of fame? Will you be shooting for J.K. Rowling notoriety or bust? How many copies of your book would you need to sell before you truly felt “successful”? What would stand out to you as a true mark to stand there and think to yourself, “Wow, I’ve really actually made it!”

For me, I’ve always told myself, if there’s at least a handful of people that have read my books and found something to love about them, I’m happy. If those few people enjoyed it enough to want to tell other people about it, even better. I’d consider myself “famous” to the degree of my dreams if someone mentioned “L.S. Engler,” and, immediately, someone else would relate it to something they’ve read. I’ve always joked that I’d consider it the ultimate mark of fame once one of my characters showed up at Fandom High.

There are so many ways to measure fame. I think a lot of us aren’t telling the whole truth if we say that fame isn’t a concern. Fame is definitely a concern for me. I want to be famous. I want to be known. I am not ashamed of that. I have all these wonderful stories that I want to share with the world, but I have a lot of work to do before I get there. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and lose sight of that, to instead just live in the dream, but I’m determined to keep on. Writing is the only thing I truly want to do with my life; if it doesn’t earn me a lick of fame and my only audience is only my family and friends…that’s pretty disappointing, but I’ll take it. Now, if I can get beyond that, though, that would truly be a dream come true.

Of course, that won’t happen unless I get some books finished, so, if you’ll pardon me, I’m going to get back to writing! Definitely share your thoughts, though, I’d love to hear them!