Writing Pips, Forward Motion Community

Here's how they work.

• Count up the number of short works (fiction or non-fiction, including completed poetry) that you've written
• Count the number that you've sold to an editor. Selling for copies counts, self-publishing does not. (An editor or publisher must accept your work for it to count toward a sales pip.)
• Count the number of book-length works you've written (basically anything over 60,000 words). These can be fiction or non-fiction. (Children's books count as short works if they're under 50,000-60,000 words.)
• Count the number of book-length works you've sold to an editor.
• Count the number of rejection slips you've received for all works combined.
• Choose the pip of lower number that is closest to the number for each count. If you've sold twenty-four books, for example, you get the ten-book pip. (And my sympathies. I'm currently in the same boat.)
• These aren't Roman numerals -- you don't add pips to give an exact count. You just choose the closest, then work to reach the next one in each category.
• Special pips -- if they apply, add them to your sig.

All of these pips are on the honor system. No one is going to check up on you. But you won't be able to cheer for the completion of your first novel if you've been running around with a five-novel pip for six months. Don't cheat yourself -- every milestone in writing matters, and the earliest ones are some of the most exciting and the best.

Have fun, wear your pips with joy and anticipation.

Here's how to add them to your sig, or a post on the board.

Find the appropriate pip. Simply Right-click (or Mac-key-Click) on the image you like, Copy Shortcut, and paste the link into your post. That's all there is to it. You can line them up any way you like -- we have no special order of display.

Older pips can be found on the Writers' Gif Archive page. They have been moved to improve page loading but are still available and require no change to your signature if you already have them linked.