the ten year theory

Cynsations has an excellent interview with Cecil Castellucci on her awesome Boy Proof:

I have a theory. The ten-year theory. I think it takes everyone, any artist in any discipline, about ten years to “make it”. (Whatever making it means to you.) But pretty much, it’s a ten-year waiting list. So you just have to stand in line and wait your turn. You just have to decide that you are in line. Oh sure, some people get cuts, or their line goes faster. I think the biggest challenge about waiting in line is just not giving up. I mean I had four novels, a picture book and an easy reader, all rejected. So, just getting it up to continue to write when it seemed pretty hopeless and as though I’d never get published, and perhaps was actually untalented, was a challenge. But I had my ten-year theory.

Just FYI, from the time I got serious about writing to the day Boy Proof came out in March, it had been 9 years. Theory proved.

See also: my thoughts on Boy Proof