Compromise

Compromises. We all make them at some point or another in our lives. For better or for worse, they are a necessity at some point or another.

My compromise this month was trading work worth money now vs. work worth money later. In other words, the creative writing took a back seat while I focused on the large project that landed on my plate around the first of the month. I'm about halfway through the project and I'm on track for the May 1st deadline. The downside is I've not had the energy to do any chapter work on my novel. I'm sitting at 70k words (Prologue + 10 chapters), which is roughly 1/3 of the way done.

It's not that I haven't had the time. I have a few hours of spare time each day, but after sitting at the desk for 6-8 hours working on research, blogging, networking, e-mailing, and the 3-4 hours of freelance work I do, I just haven't had the energy to really work much on the novel this month. After typing 6-8k worth of words per day, I'm just burnt on sitting here and doing another 1500-2k for the novel. I've dabbled a bit here and there in chapter 11, but I'm only about 1200 words in, which is generally about half a session's worth for me. I'm a bit disgruntled about the fact that I've not done much work on the book since the beginning of March (March I only did 2 chapters), but I've been balancing that out with the fact that my freelance career has picked up to the point that if we stay on track, we'll be 100% debt free within a few months.

Comprehend debt free. A state I have not been in since I was a teenager. We only have 4.3k worth of debt left, and half of that will be gone by the end of May. I'm hoping the other half will be gone by the end of July. And then it's sweet freedom. No bills. Nothing left to pay but the living expenses of our day to day life, and the rest is sweet, bankable income.

I know I don't have a reason to rush on the novel. I've got several short stories in circulation and I've got steady work. It's more of a personal deadline. I really wanted to have a completed manuscript by Christmas. I can still do it, I think, but it's going to take some refinement of my schedule.

So it's a compromise. Sure, the work on my book is getting pushed back a bit, but it's for a good cause. We'll be 100% debt free within a few months, and that's a sweet, sweet goal. Not to mention, once that happens I can pick and choose my freelance projects around my novel schedule, rather than the other way around. And that means more time to focus on what it is that I really want to be doing, which is writing books for a living. Freelance writing is great, but it's the creative writing that I crave, that I thrive upon. I'm just happy that I've been blessed with this opportunity in the first place. I definitely don't intend to waste it.

And I'll be keeping people posted as my first professional short story comes out next month (May) in Flashing Swords Press. That's going to be a pretty cool day, to see my first ever short story in actual print.