[amy_seqmedia]

TL;DR Always work hard, keep your eyes open, and be helpful.

On the point of luck, yes there is a whole lot of lucky circumstance which you have no control over that puts in you in a lucky position. But I believe you pass a point in your life where it goes from being purely lucky to being just plain prepared. If Scalzi didn't work at his craft or his networking, the opportunities that availed themselves to him probably would not have happened.

I think a lot about where I am and where I'm going. There's lots of things I do now that don't have immediate payoff. Rather, I think of everything as just training for something else down the road. So I try to get good (or at least passably decent) at a breadth of things and specialize in a few. Hopefully then when luck swings my way I'm prepared to go after that small window of opportunity with full force.

I'm also a big fan of paying it forward, like Scalzi. Not everything is money---often it's just time. Giving someone honest feedback, lending them a hand, or supporting their efforts is all good karma. When you help others in a way you help yourself: growing your community of interest, raising the overall standard of living, moving groups of people forward.