My initial enthusiasm for the challenge of writing with a day job, essentially working two jobs, lasted all of a few days. Everything went downhill pretty quickly after that.
In short, February was a disaster.
I didn’t edit one chapter of The World Saving Series. I had a list of short stories that needed work. After struggling with rewrites on “The Guinea Pig” for a week in order to meet a deadline, I gave up when I finally realized that story just wasn’t going to do what I needed it to do. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t spent the week before that struggling with rewrites on another story that I ended up not rewriting. Three short stories that I needed to review/revise got pushed into March, therefore really pushing the deadlines on those pieces.
February led me to question whether or not I really was committed to being a writer. With some of the urgency gone now that I have stable income, I was left to wonder if I was just writing for the money and now that I’m getting the money, would I eventually stop writing.
Maybe it’s just me wanting to believe the best in myself (which is pretty unlikely), but I don’t think that’s the case.
After all, I started this crusade in earnest when I was still working at my last job. I wrote for about six months while working part-time in retail with little trouble. The difference was the situation. Then I was working part-time and had only a few short stories that I was writing and revising. Now I’m working full time and I have probably a dozen short stories in the mix and at least three novels in various stages (that haven’t been lost to the two computer crashes that happened a year apart). The motive and goal is still the same: to establish a successful writing career. The situation is the only thing that’s changed.
I think it’s going to take some trial and error to find out what the right work load is now that I’m working full time. I’m also going to have to work smarter. I can’t spend so much time battling one story with no payoff. And I’m going to have to accept that I’m going to be tired sometimes after a long day in the cube and just get my writing done anyway. A little progress is better than no progress and I need all the progress I can get.
But the key is going to be the workload. I can’t keep scheduling my months like I’m not spending forty hours a week doing something else.
I need to meet myself half-way.
Stories By The Numbers
Submitted: 3 (just sent out “Another Deadly Weapon”; “Summer Rot” and “Such a Pretty Face” are still out)
Ready: 4 (“Husband and Wife”, “Elevator”, “Bigger Than a Squirrel”, and now “Erin Go Bragh”)
Rejected: 1 (“Spillway”)
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