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Thursday, April 4th
Apr. 4th, 2013 07:57 amThe Daily Report
I've come to a realization over the past few days that's one of those things that seems like it should have been obvious in retrospect, but wasn't: writing in general isn't my full-time job... Tales of MU is.
If I were in an office job, I'd be showing up for 8 to 10 hours every day not because there's always that much work in the Tales of MU bin but because there might be and they need someone available to handle it. And when things are slow or I'm fast, then I can pitch in to help other departments or steal moments to work on my own little projects (as I always did when I worked office jobs).
If you've been following me since 2007, you might be thinking, "But didn't you specifically quit your office job to make Tales of MU your full-time job?" And yes, but also no. Because I wasn't thinking about it that way. When I was working the office job and writing Tales of MU, I was working 40 hours and also coming home every night to spend two to five hours writing... and spending three or four hours walking to and from work, which gave me a lot of time to be alone with my thoughts but didn't leave much for anything else. And I thought, well this is unsustainable. And it was. People who interacted with me back then pretty much knew I was a walking exposed nerve.
But when I quit that job, it seemed like it would have been a waste of time and opportunity to just focus on Tales of MU. I had whole days stretching out in front of me. I had doubled or tripled or more my writing time. Instead of focusing on making Tales of MU as good as I could and making the updates as consistent and regular as possible, I tried to do more web serials. Lots of them. Instead of trying to grow the audience for MU, I tried to reach new audiences with new stories.
And ultimately, this was as unsustainable as the previous arrangement was. Yes, life's gotten in the way many times and in many different ways over the years, but it would have been easier to roll with the punches if I'd built my work life around this understanding that I'm coming to now.
This is not to say I'm giving up on my short stories, novellas, or The One Called Wander... though I'm going to be ditching the "story bank" angle on that and just writing it. I can collect and sell the completed stories the same way I do other things. I'm just making the clear distinction in my head that they are sidelines.
The State of the Me
Slept well, woke up clear-headed.
Plans For Today
I've got a chapter of TOMU that needs posting. It needs a bit of work, but hey... I have all day. To make a little sidebar about what it means to be a full-time employee of Writing Tales of MU Uncorporated: right now, I'm writing three chapters a week. I'm writing each chapter in one day, and then on the day it's to be posted I put aside an hour to look over it and see if I can't improve it. I've also a couple of times already just had a random insight about a to-be-posted future chapter I've already written and gone back and improved something.
This chapter happened on a foggy, bad-writing day. The days that are bad for writing, I write slower and the results aren't as good. This one's currently weighing in at a mere 1,800 words and needs some work.
If this weren't so, I could spend more time this afternoon doing all kinds of stuff. But because it is, this is what's in my hopper for the day.
I've come to a realization over the past few days that's one of those things that seems like it should have been obvious in retrospect, but wasn't: writing in general isn't my full-time job... Tales of MU is.
If I were in an office job, I'd be showing up for 8 to 10 hours every day not because there's always that much work in the Tales of MU bin but because there might be and they need someone available to handle it. And when things are slow or I'm fast, then I can pitch in to help other departments or steal moments to work on my own little projects (as I always did when I worked office jobs).
If you've been following me since 2007, you might be thinking, "But didn't you specifically quit your office job to make Tales of MU your full-time job?" And yes, but also no. Because I wasn't thinking about it that way. When I was working the office job and writing Tales of MU, I was working 40 hours and also coming home every night to spend two to five hours writing... and spending three or four hours walking to and from work, which gave me a lot of time to be alone with my thoughts but didn't leave much for anything else. And I thought, well this is unsustainable. And it was. People who interacted with me back then pretty much knew I was a walking exposed nerve.
But when I quit that job, it seemed like it would have been a waste of time and opportunity to just focus on Tales of MU. I had whole days stretching out in front of me. I had doubled or tripled or more my writing time. Instead of focusing on making Tales of MU as good as I could and making the updates as consistent and regular as possible, I tried to do more web serials. Lots of them. Instead of trying to grow the audience for MU, I tried to reach new audiences with new stories.
And ultimately, this was as unsustainable as the previous arrangement was. Yes, life's gotten in the way many times and in many different ways over the years, but it would have been easier to roll with the punches if I'd built my work life around this understanding that I'm coming to now.
This is not to say I'm giving up on my short stories, novellas, or The One Called Wander... though I'm going to be ditching the "story bank" angle on that and just writing it. I can collect and sell the completed stories the same way I do other things. I'm just making the clear distinction in my head that they are sidelines.
The State of the Me
Slept well, woke up clear-headed.
Plans For Today
I've got a chapter of TOMU that needs posting. It needs a bit of work, but hey... I have all day. To make a little sidebar about what it means to be a full-time employee of Writing Tales of MU Uncorporated: right now, I'm writing three chapters a week. I'm writing each chapter in one day, and then on the day it's to be posted I put aside an hour to look over it and see if I can't improve it. I've also a couple of times already just had a random insight about a to-be-posted future chapter I've already written and gone back and improved something.
This chapter happened on a foggy, bad-writing day. The days that are bad for writing, I write slower and the results aren't as good. This one's currently weighing in at a mere 1,800 words and needs some work.
If this weren't so, I could spend more time this afternoon doing all kinds of stuff. But because it is, this is what's in my hopper for the day.