My first big pro sale was in 2007. The game was published in 2009.
I was paid in 2012.
In that time I picked up other work, mostly for smaller companies, only two of whom ever paid. I had one contract where I screwed the maths up on the game system so hard they told me not to email them again and another where any time I was online the company head gchatted me to tell me how great the game was going to be.
A game that never came out, from what I’ve been able to tell.
It got rough there for a while. I had no confidence, I thought my work was worthless and so it was continually overlooked because I wasn’t speaking up. When I finally did, with a lot of assistance, I was paid pretty fast. And apologised to a lot.
I still work with that company and they’re good people. Since then I’ve written for four other game lines, produced my first ever original RPG for the incredibly nice and talented Jason Pitre at Genesis of Legend and as I write this have projects lined up to the end of the year and a module shortlisted for an ENnie award.
It was the first module I wrote back in 2007.
Don’t quit. Don’t ever, ever quit.