Category Archives: The Writing Life

Into the Fire-A Leap of Faith From My Day Job into Full-Time Writer

Day Jobs Jo Schneider The Writing Life Your Writing Career 2 Comments

Currently I work in the Engineering Department at a company that makes hand-crafted, wrought iron lights for really rich people. I take sketches from our design team, or from the customer, and figure out how to build them, creat blue prints (except there’s no blue involved anymore) for the guys in the shop and send the project out.

I’ve been at this job for fifteen years. And I love the work. I like figuring out how to make a light that looks like a gondola, or a hat. I enjoy most of the people I work with. And I’m good at what I do.

But it’s not what I really want to be doing.

A couple of years ago, not long after I got married, I went part time at my day job and part time writing. Since then I’ve put out seven novels, three novellas and a handful of short stories. I tried the traditional publishing path, then converted to hybrid (both traditional and indie). I’ve never replace my monthly income from my day job with my writing…but I could.

  • If I learned marketing.
  • If I figured out Facebook Ads.
  • If I read some books on business.
  • If I spent more time researching Amazon and keywords.
  • If I wrote romance.
  • If I had 10k people on my newsletter.

If, if, if…All of these things have been hanging over my head all year. If only I had time to (fill in the blank) I would be a more successful writer.

Now, plenty of people hold down full-time jobs and are successful writers. Some are stay at home moms who work even harder than those with full-time jobs. So I kind of feel like a whiner when I say that I need more time.

But then my husband pointed something out. What I do for my day job is mentally taxing. It uses my creative energy, and often I come home with little to none left.

And as I thought about that, I thought about the fact that I was putting 25-30 hours

a week toward a career that I was never going to cultivate. I learn new things all the time, but I’m not particularly motivated to memorize how many LED drivers and chips are needed for a twenty foot chandelier that looks like elk horns. Or how to use the new 3D program when I’m faster than everyone else in the 2D program I’ve worked in for twenty years.

The realization came to me that I wasn’t being fair to either of my careers.

My inner writer was always upset that I put my day job first, and I wasn’t giving my full effort to my day job, because it’s not the job I want.

So, a few months ago I decided that this would be my last year at my current job. Starting today, December 22nd, I will officially be a full-time writer!

Which is both exhilarating and terrifying. I might crash and burn, or I might rise out of obscurity and into the realms of those selling enough books to replace my lost income. I’ve tried to prepare, but to tell you the truth, I think it’s going to be like getting thrown into the fire no matter what. But a bit of fire is good in the winter, right?

 

Responses to Rejection

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During a past month where we shared Flash Fiction, I talked about those stories that just don’t sell.

There’s some good advice out there about what to do when you get a rejection:

  • Sometimes a story will be a good story, but it isn’t to the editor’s taste, or the editor received five submissions with a similar theme and could only take one, or it doesn’t have the “tone” or “feel” that matches the other stories in the anthology/magazine/etc.  There’s no reason this story won’t sell somewhere else, to an editor who likes this kind of story, or to an anthology where it’s a better fit with the other stories.
  • If the editor offers you feedback on the story, consider using that feedback, both in revisions, and in writing from that point forward.  (If you don’t use it, make sure it’s for logical reasons, rather than ego-driven reasons.)
  • It’s the height of unprofessionalism to argue with the editor about why they “should have” accepted your story.  And while many of us were brought up to believe that “thank you” notes are appropriate, in the case of story submissions they typically aren’t.  Editors are often overworked and filtering through 700 “thank you for your response” emails from rejected authors are a waste of their time.  The detriment to the editor outweighs the courtesy of the gesture.
  • If the story’s solid, send it out again to a different market.  Caveat:  If I wrote a story for an anthology, I sit on it for a while before I send it out again.  The reason?  If a magazine gets a submission about Lake Monsters, and they know an anthology about Lake Monsters recently sent out its rejection letters, then they can do the math and guess that the story in front of them was rejected from the anthology.  It could be a perfectly good Lake Monster story, but it’s tainted by association.  Sit on your Lake Monster story for a year or so; review it and revise it if you think the changes will improve it; then send it out again.

But what do you do when you don’t think the story’s solid?

Next month I’m going to talk about the stories that just don’t sell, and when to rewrite vs when to let it go.

See you then!

2017 – A Very Good Year – Guest Post by T. Allen Diaz

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As we prepare to close out 2017 and move into 2018, it seems a good time to reflect on what has gone well and what has not gone so well. It’s the traditional time for the dreaded “New Year’s Resolution” that is normally dead and in the grave before the first week of February.  Because of this, I usually look upon our annual tradition of making-and-breaking promises to ourselves with suspicion or even a little scorn. But, when I was asked to do a piece on the year in review and lessons I wanted to apply in the next year, I was happy to do it because this year several things have lined up for me and I’ve learned a lot I hope I can pass on.

This year has been a banner year for me: my novel, Lunatic City, picked up by WordFire Press, hit the streets in July, and I sold a Four Horsemen short story, Hero of Styx to Seventh Seal Press in November. I’m in the final stages of getting another of my short stories The Witch published in different anthology, but I have no contract, so that’s as much as I feel I can say about that one. In addition, there are some other very exciting projects lined up for 2018, including my big project, the rough draft of The War of the Gods Saga is in the home stretch of “preproduction”. I hope to have it ready to go by February-March. I think that is doable. There is also a sequel to Lunatic City which is in post-production, a follow-up story to The Witch, and at least one more exciting project I dare not comment on, but will be requiring lots of my time.

 

Which brings me to one of my biggest challenges I have really struggled with: time management and, more specifically production. I have traditionally struggled to do two thousand words on any given day, though I’ve done seventy-five, once, that was a seven AM to ten PM marathon while writing Lunatic City. I have a day job and kids and many complicated personal life demands on my time that frequently conspire to steal my hours and minutes, just like everyone else.

If I’m not going to be able to create more hours in the day, I’m going to have to make better use of the time I have. First order of business: remove distractions. I traditionally listen to music, but I had taken to running You Tube videos while I wrote, and, without exception, I would find myself becoming distracted and slowing my pace. It had to stop. So, now, I listen to instrumental music, usually movie scores. This is a nice background noise that keeps my surroundings at bay while allowing me to concentrate.

My second major change: I’ve stop going back and fixing things I’ve decided to alter mid-story. That’s what rewrites are for. The way I have been doing things has been to stop, go back and find the piece I wanted to change before continuing with my story. It not only takes me out of the scene I’m writing, but often ends with me getting lost in my manuscript, looking for specific scenes or even passages. It must stop.

Lastly, I must come to the writing table with real forethought on what I want to write. When I have things thought out, or even better, jotted down. My little fingers fly over the keyboard and I can get upwards of a thousand words a minute. That’s moving! I have also maximized my time by getting out of bed at the wee hours of the morning, usually between five and five-thirty, though I’ve been known to get up earlier. This has two benefits: two hours of writing I don’t normally get and the opportunity to use my brain when it is freshest and at its best: right after coffee.

There are other things I’m hoping to do better in 2018: get the website I abandoned in favor of a FB page up-and-running, book signings, attend more conventions, do some panels, email lists, and much more. Some requires money which I’m hoping to start pulling from my soon-to-be arriving royalties. Others require time and commitment which I’m hoping to have after I’m done with the first War of the Gods manuscript. Either way, 2017 has been great. Here’s to an even better 2018!

 

T. Allen Diaz is the author of speculative fiction, including the dark space epic series the Proceena Trilogy and his gritty, moon-based noir Lunatic City. He lives in the Tampa Bay area with his wife and three kids where he has lived for his entire life. Follow him on Twitter as @Proceenawriter and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/T.AllenDiaz where you can stay up-to-date on all of his latest news and events. 

Year in Review

Being Gentle With Yourself Day Jobs Dealing With Personal Calamities Giving Yourself a Break Goals Kim May Publishing The Writing Life The Writing Process Work-Life Balance Your Writing Career 2 Comments

Oh boy. Do I really want to go over the entirety of my journey? Can’t I just brush it aside and forget it ever happened?

Well…no. There were some really good things this year. Things like the release of my first novel, getting into the Epic Fantasy Storybundle, my Monster Hunter Files story being well received. There have been a a lot of really great things this year for me as an author. But what I mostly remember about this year was my failure to accomplish my main goal — take better care of myself.

I won’t go into a tale of personal woe. The short of it is that this year did not go as planned and it was all around much harder to find the time and energy to get anything done that I wanted or needed to. I think the only thing that did go as planned was that I learned how to use Dragon and that with my acupuncturist’s help my arthritis pain is the lowest it’s been in years. Too bad the rest of my life isn’t falling into line. But there is still hope for next year. Onward and upward, right?