I Quit My Job To Try And Be A Proper Author

So I quit my job to try doing this writing thing properly.

Now that statement requires clarification in many areas, which I will provide below, but essentially… yeah. I have made the potentially unwise decision to make a serious attempt at doing this author malarkey for a living. As in, get a literary agent, get a traditional deal, sell some books and ultimately retire to my private library island with a collection of antique smoking jackets.

Maybe not the last bit. But otherwise, that’s the plan. I realised that if I don’t give it a proper go now, I might never really have the chance – or at least that it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to try and become a full-time author now than it will be in 10 years when I’ve got a mortgage/kids/dog to worry about. I know other authors who’ve managed that and I salute them all. But it’s hard enough to get a break in this business already without having to worry about the rest of my actual life.

I have been a documentary researcher and writer for the last 3 years, which is a great job: I got to write for a living, I got to go to awesome places, meet great people and tell amazing stories. But because I was doing that writing 5 days a week, I was pouring most of my creativity into that, rather than into my own work. I’ve kept up my 500 words a day, but most of the time that’s all I could manage. And that’s saying nothing of editing, proofreading, formatting… After a solid week of writing (and then another day of working with children), the last thing I want to do is sit in front of a computer all day and write even more.

So I’m leaving that job. (I’m actually staying on as a freelancer for a while at least to finish some projects, but 1 day a week is still a lot better for my brain.) I do, of course, still need to actually have money, so I’m expanding some other jobs, including the aforementioned working with children and LEGO. But I’m not writing for those jobs. The only creativity I’ll need is sufficient imagination to build cool stuff out of plastic bricks. For the first time in a long time, the only person I’ll be writing for is me. Apart from the freelancing. But still.

Essentially, I needed headspace to think about writing and more time to do it in. And space to do all the other things that come with writing and that I’ll need to do a lot more of if I’m to ‘make it’, as it were. Agent applications, submissions, editing manuscripts – all the things I’ve spent the last 3 years largely putting off because I just didn’t have the time or mental bandwidth. Well, in a week or two I’ll have that time, and I’m determined to use it properly.

I’m still going to be self-publishing stuff. We’re over halfway through the year but I’m still going to try and get a book out if I can, and with the extra time I should be able to crack on with my next batch of projects a lot more effectively than I can now. I would like to get an agent and be traditionally published – that’s the dream, and I’m going to be dedicating a lot of time to trying to achieve it – but until that actually happens, it’s going to be business as usual. Just more business, and more effectively.

I don’t know exactly how long this will last. I am making many lists and plans and timetables of what I’ve got to do, how much time I can commit to everything, how long I can afford to commit to it. I don’t know if this is going to work. In all probability, it won’t. But I’m going to give it a damn good try.

I’m terrified. I’m excited. Let’s see how this goes.