This Just Became A Job

Having a day job is the proverbial double-edged sword for a writer. It consumes a big chunk of waking hours, limiting your available writing time. But it also gives you security and stability, so your creative efforts are unencumbered. This is the traditional, compartmentalized view of how things shake out.

Publishing puts a writer’s “work” and “creative” worlds on a collision course. Suddenly, in addition to creating high-quality product, you also need to plan and execute promotion, track your results, manage a budget, and show up at events, among other things. The business side doesn’t run itself. Depending on your publishing model, your DIY spirit, and your finances, most or all of those chores fall to you.

It turns into a job.

We’re going through something of an adjustment period here in the writing cave. It’s been a challenge to maintain our desired productivity on the WIP now that the first couple of novels have fled the nest. Which is ironic. We thought they’d take up less of our time once they were checked off the list, not more.

Jen’s mad skillz at project management (and her obsession with little squares of colored paper) have served us very well. Kent’s technological savvy has proved quite useful. We’re able to talk things out and divvy up workloads, because there are two of us. But it’s not easy. We’re still learning.

We don’t have any magical time-management secrets to impart, sorry. But to make up for that, we’re happy to report that we are making good headway on that WIP. Its first draft is somewhere around 75-80% complete. So, it might be a job, but it’s a job that gives satisfaction.