My current full-time job is a good job. I've mastered a lot of the skills and information I didn't have my first year, I have a supportive boss I can talk with and I love my co-workers. I can't picture myself doing it for the next 20 years, but for where I'm at in my life it's a good job and one I'm content with.
The only downside? The past two months have been a crazy whirlwind due to some staff losses and difficulty in hiring. I realized last night that while I've built up my author social media presence and done much better interacting on Twitter, Facebook, etc., I've failed to do the one thing I should be focusing on as an author seeking publication: WRITE!
Crazy, right? But this is a problem I hear about from many other authors balancing full-time jobs, part-time jobs, volunteer and charity activities, family obligations and a myriad of other things. With so much going on how can any of us expect to find time to take a deep breath, much less write bestselling material without falling into the passive voice/cliche hero/purple prose traps?
That being said, the more I read and the more I work with other writers in my critique group, the more I want to go for my passion, my dream of becoming a published romance author.
So I decided to make a commitment. I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo.org). I didn't even realize the website existed until I did a search on how to finish a book in a month. The site provides a variety of resources, including tools to help you plan out writing your book, online forums that help you connect with other writers and even information on local critique groups.
As I started to fill out the sign-up sheet, I panicked. What if I don't finish? There were over 700,000 people who did this last year. How can I ever expect mine to get picked for publication? Is there a point to finishing this? My writing probably sucks.
And then I had another thought. Who cares? I enjoy writing. I love seeing something random in my daily life and spinning it into a tale of fiction. I love creating sentences, some beautiful and some downright ugly. I love to read, I love to write, and while getting published is the ultimate goal, I need to be able to take some joy from the simple act of putting my ideas onto paper.
So I finished the sign-up. I may finish my novel in a month or I may not. My whole plan of submitting my first round of queries by May could be a feasible goal or could be completely ludicrous with my current schedule.
But I'm trying. And for right now, I'm content with that.
