An addendum: last night, I couldn’t see anything about carving out a reputation in Court while going through the romance storyline, but today I can see "What’s your next work?" again, without having finished the romance storyline.
Either I missed it, or it’s been tweaked a bit, or maybe you have to advance to a certain stage of the romance storyline to unlock it, but don’t have to finish?
It also looks like publishing my short story to make my name still left me Working On A Short Story, simply with zero potential and manuscript pages!
A minor oversight, of course, since I can abandon the story with one action in the usual place. (Begin a Work)
Looks like starting to carve out a reputation no longer requires any other qualities; you just have to be able to get into court. Not sure about the final work that gets you kicked out of court; perhaps that one’s still tied to completing the previous tracker task? (the court romances)
I noticed this, and the reason you didn’t is because it wasn’t there for several days after the initial rollout.
It didn’t help though, as that storylet is just a loop for me (starting at a quality of two, going to 7, and resetting) and I can’t advance my "A Name Signed…" quality past two.