The Business of Writing Books

The takeaway message here is that I have no business talking about writing books.

I mean, I write them. I’m almost done with my third full-length novel in a year. I don’t, however, do anything else with them. They sit and glare at me (metaphorically, obviously, although if it was literally I might actually do something because that is some creepy shit).

Today is day five of some time away from my job that pays the bills. The first couple days were weekends, and so were not super productive, but the last few days it’s just been me and the computer.

And you know what? I’m pretty happy.

I’m certain that if I kept this up and stopped showing up to work, I would stop getting paid, and I like money. Money is nice. Money allows me to pay my mortgage and pay for daycare  and student loans (oh, the student loans) and all the other things I enjoy like internets and smart phones and electricity.

Oh, and hot water. Love me some hot water.

Yesterday I started to wonder how I could reconcile these two things: the desire to stay home and write every day and the desire to have a home with heat and hot water and coffee and beer to write in.

And then today, Chuck Wendig posted this magic which lead me to this magic.

This is just what I needed to go with the tentative financial plans I made yesterday.

Key points of advice, paraphrased:

  1. Get rid of your fucks, for there are no more fucks that need to be given.

2. But don’t starve.

There’s a lot of really good advice, all of which I intend to follow, but the most important things are to (a) do it, do it a lot; (b) stop caring so much about other shit, and (c) don’t wait to do it. (Also, starving artist is not really that cool, so don’t strive for that.)

I have the first part of a four-year plan (the financial part) but now need to move on to the second part (the actual doing it a lot and not giving so many fucks part).

And then I have to balance writing and working and and triathlon training and sleeping.

This is the year of working my ass off (not literally Bianca the Yoga Butt will come to my rescue) but I can do it and I declare here, with you as my witness, that it shall be so.

(If anyone wants to just randomly start sending me a few thousand dollars a month, though, that’d be cool. I’ll dedicate my books to you.)

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