I was just reading Brandon Sanderson’s EUOLogy on writing and realized something – I know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be a writer. Yeah, I realize that that probably isn’t a surprise if you’ve watched the last few months of me picking up the pen again, but I mean, for real. I too have the closet full of dull, dead manuscripts, though in my case I never seemed to be able to give up the bone – I just kept trying to rewrite the same few novels over and over and over again, convinced I could find what was wrong with them and fix it “this time.”
Sadly, at least conceptually, the two short stories (one done and probably unpublishable, the second the one I’m working on now) fall into the same category. The story may have changed, but believe it or not, the titles for both stories have been hanging around in the closet for over a decade. When I finish excising this ghost that is “Settler’s Way” I want to strike out in a fresh direction.
Can I hope to make a living at it? Probably not. I have an idea of what the average author makes, and its not a path to riches (nor am I making it a goal because I thought it was). I make a more than decent salary now, and so long as I stay with my current employer (a traditionally safe, stable employer despite any market problems), I will continue to make enough to support a wife and three kids (tightly at times, given the cost of private school, but that too is a choice we made). But I feel that burn, that yearn, to pour thoughts and words onto paper. And despite my many failures at this craft, every time I pick it up I find my writing to be improved (I think; yeah, I’m biased, I know).
[ Random thought: rather than using my annual leave up in short bursts, a day here, a day there, throughout the year, what if I saved up my comp time and annual leave and took it one fell swoop (minus necessary holiday leave) each year? Kind of a save it up so you can take a 2, 3, maybe 4 week sabbatical to write each year…meh, won’t do it, but its an interesting thought to have. ]
So how do you know when you’ve reached that elusive point of being grown up? Aren’t you a Toys-R-Us kid?
All joking aside… it’s VERY good to have some purpose, some direction, to the things you’re doing.
I look forward to reading more of your writing, Mike.
I miss the Gentoo days… sort of.
Thank you 🙂
And yeah, I have moments of regret over leaving Gentoo, but its more of a regret on the fun I had doing the work, not the actual product at large, which I think is crucial. I was just going through the motions towards the end as far as caring about Gentoo itself, and that’s not a positive way to approach it.