The Enormity of the Task Ahead

I realize that I am rehashing over old stuff here, but I slept badly last night, due in large part to restless children, and this was bouncing around my mind in the darkness. I’m sure some of it was merely a case of the dark amplifying the shadows that normally haunt a writer and twisting them into something far uglier… rather, I hope.

Have you ever stopped, put your keyboard to one side and taken a moment to think about the enormity of the task at hand. I’ll be honest, I don’t like my job, and I don’t want to be working there until I can retire, forty years from now. I want to be able to write full-time.

I see a lot of my friends online powering ahead through their careers and some of them even write full-time. By that I mean, they have left the day job behind.

This is where my ‘experience’ came from last night. With 4 kids at home to support, and with the expensive way of life in Holland, I don’t think I will ever be in a  position to stop (office) working and write full-time. Not unless I achieve full on global success. Sure that is the ultimate goal, let’s face it, that is a completely different level of success than many indie authors achieve.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, but then my mind continued to percolate and got me thinking about my writing. I am now finalizing a short story collection, but … is it good enough, can I afford to put something out there that won’t make it? Will it bite me in the ass and end up hurting me. Or rather, am I publishing these short stories in an anthology because they are good, or because I want to have something out there, something being sold and (hopefully) earning me money?

The, the final and most frightening moment of the whole course of events was about my real job. I put in my eight hours and go home. The job irritates me, and offers me no satisfaction, but, it is a job, and it pays the bills, so I cannot complain. However, should I be doing more? It isn’t a career, there aren’t any promotion pathways and the like, but maybe, just maybe, I should be spending more time focused on that. Maybe I am going about things the wrong way. Writing is the hobby, it is the thing that may pay my bills, one day, if I am lucky. The job is what does pay the bills, and like it or not, it’s the only thing around.

I can even take it in a broader context, because if I moved jobs, I know I would feel just the same after 6 months, because office work like that bores me. So any sort of job like that I turn up on time, leave on time and get pissed if anything keeps me there over my scheduled 40 hours.

While this may sound more like a pity party, I can assure you it is not. It was just the way my mind worked in the midnight hours. It was always about the writing, the plans, and the Mount Everest (squared) climb that not only I, but all writers face.

It makes me thankful that the writing community is so close-knit and willing to help each other out, because, in all seriousness, can you even imagine what it would be like if we were all just out for ourselves?