Some personal musings

Just got confirmation on continuing work with one of my newer clients, with an extended schedule that will be until roughly the end of December. That means I have the rest of 2009 booked with work, and can rest easy in terms of paying gigs.

As it stands now, I've got three different projects going for two different clients. Busy, busy little bee, for sure.

I talk about it a lot, but I really am torn. I love my job, but I do want to write fiction full time. The downside is that fiction writing doesn't pay well...not for the first few years, unless you get exceptionally lucky. It also takes an increasingly frustrating length of time to hear back from editors regarding your submission. Right now I'm at the four month mark on three different short stories that I haven't heard back on yet. I won't make much more than a few hundred dollars per story at most if they manage to sell, so you can see how getting started in the fiction world just doesn't work unless you happen to have a paying job and/or a spouse who is willing to foot the bills while you struggle at finding yourself getting published.

Now, I'm blessed in that I've already been published here and there with some short stories. The real issue I'm having is this: do I want to pursue my passion, or do I want to keep padding the savings account?

Thing is, we spent all of our savings in moving over here + living off of it for the entirety of 2008. By the end of October we will be where we were before we moved here in terms of how much we have in the savings. On the plus side, we will be considerably more than that by the end of December. This year has been very good to us in terms of finances, which was a blessed relief in comparison to 2007, which was a horrid year. Up until that point I had been making a steady 60k a year on the net end, which afforded us to live rather high on the hog. 2006 I dropped to 48k, and then in 2007 I didn't even clear 38k on the gross end of things, and I was working twice as many hours and driving 4 hours up the mountain every week. I'd leave home on Monday mornings at around 6 a.m., and I'd work four 10-12 hour days, leave Steamboat Springs around 6 p.m. on Thursday evening and be back home by 10 or 11 p.m. and get to spend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with Evy, before turning around and doing it all over again. There was literally no work in the Denver area in 2007, nor along the Front Range. Housing market had dried up completely, and with the immigration crisis on top of it...well, it wasn't a pretty picture.

So...we are padding up nicely. I have now determined that my book, as much as I enjoy working on it, and as much as I want to get it done, has pretty much been pushed to the back burner. I started out at the first of the year with good intentions. I did the first 11 chapters plus the prologue between January and June, with each chapter between 6 and 7k words. Not a bad start. I was doing at least 2 chapters per month. But by June my freelance work had picked up to the point that the book got shelved in favor of paying gigs...and now I find myself still struggling to get chapter 12 written. Not for lack of wanting to, nor for lack of time. I just...don't seem to be that motivated. It's pretty much turned into a pet project that I do in my spare time. As much as I want to work on it, I just don't. I started working on chapter 12 last Sunday...and that's the only work I've done on it all week. I'm hoping to get some more work done on it tomorrow morning while she's sleeping, but we have to go to Grandma's house to help paint tomorrow afternoon, so my time is limited there.

However, when everything's said and done I have one consolation: I'm being successful. Which makes it really hard to feel all that bad about not getting work done on the novel. It's a passion project, after all. A life-long dream. And I will get to it. I'm just enjoying what I'm doing right now so much that I'm not stressed about it.

Now, of course a lot of it's simply motivation. I have a lot of spare time. A lot. But Evy and I do a lot of different things. We take walks every day. Those take 2-3 hours. And yes, it's every single day. Then there's working out...that takes at least an hour. We also watch a lot of shows, and September means that all of the ones we follow just started new seasons...Fringe, Dexter, Dollhouse, Castle...and Legend of the Seeker, Sanctuary, and Stargate: Universe all start in October. Plus she follows Gray's Anatomy (or is it Grey's?). I also read, do a lot of Internet browsing, and we also play computer games from time to time.

As the winter months come closer, I think what will happen is that our 2-3 hour walking sessions will end up transferring into book writing sessions. Or at least, that's what I hope happens. It's too damn cold to go traipsing around Sofia in the middle of winter, so that's a slot of time I hope to put to good use, and stop procrastinating for no good reason.

I think what it boils down to is that I've become complacent in my success. I didn't anticipate freelance writing was going to be this easy, or this lucrative, and now that I'm firmly established in the field as a bonafide writer, I've met one of the major goals in my life. It also doesn't hurt that our living expenses are negligable, and we aren't starving by any means. Mostly, however, I think it's something psychological in terms of being established as a writer...any writer. It doesn't necessarly have to be fiction. I just wanted to be a writer. And I've done that.

So...kudos to me. And kudos to Evy for letting me spend the time necessary to branch out to do it. The first few months were noticably barren, but since then it's only continued to grow, and I am extremely comfortable now, which is a good thing.

I've been having a discussion with some of our gaming friends recently about Halloween traditions around the world. I find it interesting that America has commercialized every single holiday under the sun in order to maximize profits year-round, and when I'm in other parts of the world it's sometimes disconerting in a sense to notice an absolute lack of marketing in regards to holidays. Not to mention many European countries don't even worry about "celebrating" Halloween, or other such days. There is no trick-or-treating, no decorating, no costume parties, or otherwise. It feels weird to me.

In any case, it's close to 2:30 a.m. here, and I've a need to sleep. More next time!