Such opportunities you'll have!

So the other day I was websurfing during lunch and wandered over to a friend’s LJ. From there I bounced to another LJ, belonging to someone I’ve worked with before but have never met in person. So far so good.
I’m checking out his LJ, and he’s got an entry about writing for RPGs. He talks about how cool it is to write them, and how you can really hone your skills on them. Fine. But then he mentions that, when you hit the point where work comes to you instead of you having to hunt for it, it’s time to move on.
Fair enough, right? Aim for bigger and better things. But in the comments to this entry he goes on about how there are so many opportunities out there, and if you’ve got some credits under your belt (apparently from the RPG industry) it’s easy to get noticed and get gigs. Specifically, novels.
Um—wha? Or, more succinctly, what world are you living in? Because it sure ain’t the one I see out my window.
Sorry, but this really gets under my skin when I see people talking about how easy it is to break into things like novels. Bullsh*t it is. It’s incredibly hard, and I don’t care how many RPGs you’ve written. Hell, I’ve done something like 70 of them myself, and it still took me until last year to land a novel. A lot of publishers actually sneer at RPG credits (just like my wife discovered, years back, that a lot of NY employers sneered at non-NY work experience. Like it’s not real if your former job was in another state. Nice.) and are more inclined to work with a complete unknown than with someone with an RPG background. Others simply don’t care about anything you’ve done that isn’t straight fiction.
Basically, if you think getting a novel or two is easy you’re either naive, incredibly lucky, or possessed of unique resources (like a close friend or relative who’s an editor and can hand you a novel contract). Most of us have to work damn hard for it. So yeah, it irks me when I see someone waltz past and get it with little or no effort. But what really pisses me off is when that person turns around and sneers at the rest of us, or laughs and brags about how easy it was.
Grrr.