Category: writing life (Page 2 of 16)

Keep Your Day Job

September 3, 2023 / / 2 Comments

I went back to teaching last month. Not an easy decision, but a necessary one.

Perhaps.

I made the decision out of fear, and I’m not ashamed by it. Money is necessary to live in our world, I have children, and the uncertainty of freelance work was giving me crippling anxiety. When I switched to being a freelancer last year, I thought I could handle the ups and downs, the lean months and the flush months.

Reader, I could not.

I was anxious almost from the word go, but then I got a few clients and things seemed good. Then I got no clients, and things seemed bad. Then a client again, but not much money. Then no clients. I watched as my savings drained from my account like a torrent of thunderstorm rain.

I was very, very bad at this uncertainty stuff, at this hustling business. I am not a hustler, it turns out. I’m a writer, but I’m not necessarily an entrepreneur. Being a freelance editor was not a good fit for me. Frankly, being a freelance anything seems to be a bad fit. I like the security of a paycheck, a regular, twice-a-month, I-know-what-I’m-getting paycheck, and if that makes me a soft, squishy coward, then so be it. I like knowing I can pay my bills and buy groceries and save up for my children’s future.

There’s a big push in our culture to equate making money with worth. The goal is to make a living from my writing, right? That’s how you know you’ve achieved success, right? That’s the dream everyone is always talking about. Do what you love for a living and you’ll never work a day in your life, or some such bullshit.

But doing what you love for a living, in my experience, at least if that thing is creative work, is a double-edged sword. It means putting a burden on your art: it must feed you; it must support your kids. That’s a heavy burden, and I found myself questioning my earlier desires. Maybe if I was suddenly making five or six figures with my writing, I’d be singing a different tune. I may yet sing a different tune, I don’t know.

But I do know that even the thought of relying on my writing for my family’s survival is an unpleasant thought. I once considered it a glorious thought, but then I saw what the uncertainty of being my own boss wrought, and I noped right out of that situation. It’s too much pressure. It takes the fun of writing and makes it into a J-O-B, and I don’t want my writing to be a J-O-B. I want to be disciplined and write everyday and treat it seriously, but I don’t want it to be a job. A job is what you do for money so you can survive.

I survive in order to write; I don’t want to write in order to survive.

Having a day job that isn’t my writing (or editing) means I can stop worrying about paying the mortgage and let my art be my art. I can write with total freedom, no pressure. I can simply enjoy myself, because writing is supposed to be fun, and it IS fun when I’m doing it for pure joy and not for money.

I want people to read my stuff, of course. For any artist, there is that element of wanting to connect and communicate, which is why we make stuff in the first place and don’t just leave it all in our heads, so I don’t mind selling my books. In this world, people rarely value things if they get them for free. But if I sell them or don’t sell them, it won’t matter. The fun part is the writing.

And in my work as a teacher, I get to do two things I love doing: reading and writing. (And a third thing, which is working with young people, who are very funny and energetic and much more fun to work with than adults.) I get to read books in order to teach them to students, and also in order to learn and improve my teaching. And I write in front of my students and alongside them in order to model the process and techniques of good writing. Do I wish I didn’t have to devote so much time to my day job? Yes. A thousand times yes. But it’s a necessary evil. It gives me the security I need in order to be wild and free in my art. It relieves the burden.

The key to any day job for the artist, I think, is to find one that doesn’t drain you and leaves enough time and energy for you to make your art. For the last several years, prior to my attempts at freelance editing, I thought teaching was too draining. I never had time for my art. I thought if I switched to being my own boss, I could give myself more time for writing. And it was true, I DID have more time for writing. I just didn’t have much money. And not having money made it hard to use that time for writing. Crippling anxiety ensued, and do you know what crippling anxiety does to your energy? Drains you. Dries you up.

I’m not sure if I’ve solved the puzzle of how to be a teacher and not let it drain me, but I’m trying. I’ve set ground rules for myself to keep teaching in its proper balance both time-wise and emotionally. I’ve become even more disciplined in my art, making sure I get up early every morning and write. I’ve stopped setting too-ambitious goals for my art, focusing instead on daily habits. I think what caused my burnout earlier as a teacher is that I saw teaching as opposition to my writing. If only I wasn’t teaching, why then I could write five novels a year!

Maybe I could. In fact, based on some of my output this past summer, I could do it. In the month of July I wrote about 50,000 words. I could probably maintain that pace (or greater) if all I had to do all day was write. But even if I did write five novels a year, how do I feed my children in the five years it would take to write twenty-five novels? Where does the money come from while I’m trying to reach my twenty books to 50K?

It comes from a day job, that’s where. And I’m not ashamed to say it. I used to be ashamed. After all, isn’t the goal to be one’s own boss? Isn’t the goal to make a “living” with your art?

But what if that isn’t the goal? What if the goal is something else, something that doesn’t require putting a burden on my art? Maybe the goal is to make the art. Full stop. Make the art. Let the day job pay the bills. Let the imagination and the heart and the joy make the art.

There’s no shame in having a day job. Too often, we tell artists that they haven’t achieved success unless they are making a living from their art, but that’s Capitalism talking, not the truth. The truth is, making art IS the success. It’s the creative act that counts, not the bank account.

And one further note: Since returning to teaching and getting a regular paycheck, I now have some disposable income I can put towards supporting the artists I couldn’t support before when I was barely scraping by and watching every penny fly out the window like a frightened bird. Now I can buy digital and vinyl albums of my favorite bands on Bandcamp. Now I can support more writers on Substack. Now I can buy more books from indie authors. There’s something to be said for having a little cash in one’s pocket just for fun. Now I can give back and make life a little easier for my fellow artists. That’s worth a lot. It’s worth going back to the old 9-to-5 (or in my case, 8-to-3).

Nineteen words

August 31, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I had a daily fiction-writing streak going since early March, and yesterday I broke the streak. Didn’t write any words for my fiction.

I got up late, still needed to make lunches for me and the kids, and due to an emergency sinkhole repair on the main road I usually take to work, I needed to leave early. So when I sat down to write, I barely managed to get a few words into my writer’s notebook before I had to jump in the shower.

Today was almost a repeat of yesterday, but I made it to the writing desk a little bit earlier and managed to eek out one sentence. Nineteen glorious words. But they were enough. A new streak begins.

What’s amazing about those nineteen words is that as soon as I’d written them, I felt myself lighten. Suddenly the early morning sun seemed brighter. I felt this buoyancy and energy surge through me. Just because of nineteen measly words. One sentence. But it was enough. Even something as small as a sentence can give me that spark. This is why I write fiction. Whenever I do–the good days, the bad days, the days when the words flow, and the days when the words seem caked in dry mud–I feel better. There’s something about putting words to paper–storytelling words, words that make up new worlds and characters–that fills me up, that makes me feel whole. Even one sentence, one small set of nineteen words, can do it.

I may not be writing thousands of words each day like I was in the summer, but even a small smattering of words, written daily, keeping (or starting) a streak, can make a difference. Small words every day, 365ish days a year, adds up. But even beyond the growing word count, it’s the act of writing that gives me joy. One sentence, a few words. That’s all it takes.

Works in Progress July 2023

July 3, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I’ve settled into a groove. My early morning writing routine has kept steady (with a few days here and there where I’ve had to shift my mornings to accommodate the varieties of parenting and life), and with my morning sessions, I’ve mostly focused on Norse City Limits. I’m up to 13,000 words in that project, which is amazing in some sense because it doesn’t feel like I’ve written that much. Not that 13,000 words is a lot, but when I see it all totaled together, and then I think of how I got to that 13,000, it doesn’t feel like I did any work. That’s the point of a daily habit, isn’t it? A little bit everyday adds up to a lot over time. Well, I’m proving that adage true.

My other project is a story I’m calling “Dark Was the Morning,” about an old dragon and an old dragon-slayer who must decide whether they want to face off against each other or not. They’re both tired and filled with ennui, facing the end of their lives and the slow betrayal of their minds and bodies as they age. I’m not sure if this will be a short story or a novella or something else. I’m just writin’ it and seein’ where it goes!

I wish I could say I’ve been working on Ysbaddaden and the Game of Chess, but that book is on the back burner again due to my focus on Norse City Limits. Maybe when fall rolls around and I’m getting to the midpoint of NCL, I’ll feel like I need a shift to something different and pick up Ysbaddaden again. I really want to finish the Merlin series, but I also know that these other stories are closer to the surface and need to be fished out first. I’m trying really hard to let my creative voice dictate my writing, and if Creative Voice says NCL is the way to go right now, that’s the way I’m going.

My blogging has been pretty shitty since summer started, but maybe that’s for the best. I should be outside doing summery things not hovering over my keyboard like a pasty crypt keeper. I would like to blog more, though, and maybe my renewed focus on Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG and other OSR/indie games will be the material I need to start blogging with more regularity. I’ve written before about these old-school games, and perhaps I shall write about them again in the near future. Old school RPG stuff is wildly creative, particularly the modules and settings, and I find that it’s often more interesting and inspirational than any other fantasy media. Who needs AI when there’s a random d12 table to roll on for ideas!

I think my earlier goal of 2500 words per day is too ambitious. Maybe someday I’ll hit that goal with regularity, but I think the better goal is to keep the streak of days alive. Writing a little bit every morning before the family wakes up is working well so far. 13,000 words of fiction isn’t a lot, but it’s something. And if I can keep it up, by summer’s end, I’ll hopefully hit 30,000 words. That’s a third of a novel. Not bad for a few minutes every morning.

The other problem with my 2500 words per day goal, is that eventually summer will end, and when it does, I’ll be going back to a 9-5 job (well, more like an 8:30-3:30 job… more to say about that soon…), and 2500 words will be nigh impossible on most days simply because of time constraints. And I don’t want to make writing into a chore. I don’t want writing to be a pressured thing. I don’t want to even make writing into a “career” (I’ve discovered I don’t want to make anything into a career, frankly). I want to write. For pleasure. For myself. For the sheer joy of it. But making it into a career is not for me. It might be for others, but not for me. I’d like to make art and let the day job make money.

So 2500 words is too ambitious. I would rather write daily — no matter how many words, just daily — and let the practice of writing (not the word count or end goal) be what matters. A daily habit. This is much more enriching to me than striving for a word count goal. (I shiver when I think of the word “striving.” I am not a striver. Down with striving! Up with leisure and habit!)

Make Dreams Happen

May 22, 2023 / / 2 Comments

A little while ago, my husband bought me two notebook covers for my spiral notebooks (which are my preferred type of writer’s notebook). One of the covers is made of leather and has a little loop for holding my pen. It’s beautiful, but I haven’t used it yet.

Instead, I started with the cloth one, made of green and yellow cloth and stamped with the words, “Make Dreams Happen,” on the front. I don’t know why I started with this one and not the other; I guess because I felt like the leather one was too “special” to start with (listen, my brain is weird and makes up weird rules, okay?).

I love my cloth notebook cover. Everyday, when I sit down to write in my notebook, I see that message and I remember why I’m writing: because it’s always been my dream to write stories and essays and books. The notebook is the “dream-making” machine, the place where I seed my dreams and help them grow.

When I see those words stamped on the cloth cover of my notebook, I remember what is possible within the notebook space. It almost feels like a secret pocket world that I can enter at will and in which no one else has access. I mean, that’s the allure of a private diary, right? But the notebook isn’t a diary in the classic sense where I’m recording my day-to-day activities and feelings about my day. It’s much more of a playground. A dreamscape.

I go to this dreamscape often. I really like the work-play I get to do there.

(Maybe I should just call it “play,” but I don’t think “work” needs be a dirty word, either. I grew up on the edge between working class and middle class, so work sometimes has a negative connotation for me. Work is what you do for money, to feed your family. It’s often not something you enjoy but something you must do. But work excised from money-making and Capitalism is not drudgery, nor is it a bad thing, nor is it something to be avoided. If it’s work-play or play-work, then I see it as akin to real leisure — not just relaxation — in that it helps us live the good life and contemplate more deeply what it means to be ourselves. Notebook writing is work-play in this sense. It IS play, but it’s play mixed with a kind of rigor that hues closely to what we’d associate with work. It’s the work of being more human, and in order for that work to bear fruit, it must be approached like play. Anyway, that’s what I mean.)

I write in my notebook as much as I can. It feels like I’m doing my main work in my notebook, and all the other projects — whether blogging, writing fiction, teaching, gaming — are just a network of limbs extending out from the notebook. The notebook is the heart, pumping blood to the various appendages.

I feel guilty writing in my notebook sometimes (especially on days when I write five or more pages), as if the “writing” I do inside the notebook is an elaborate form of procrastination. But what I have to remind myself of is that the notebook is the dream-field, and my scratches across its surface are the furrows that house the seeds. Without such planting, I won’t have stories or essays or other creations to share with the world.

It’s all happening under the surface, between the green and yellow cloth.

The No-Surf Files

May 20, 2023 / / 0 Comments

I check my email way too often. I don’t even really want to check it most of the time, but it’s just something *to do*, something to click on, something to tap on my phone. Most of the time it’s pointless. I mean, has anyone really emailed me between now and the five minutes prior when last I checked my inbox?

No. No, of course not.

But I check anyway. “Who knows?” my addicted brain always says. “It’s possible a new message came in.”

So I click and suddenly I’m not just checking email but surfing the internet in general, clickity click click clicking away.

Ugh.

I decided I need to commit to checking my email TWICE a day, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon, and beyond that, nothing more. But it’s not enough to quit doing something. I need to replace the itchy email urge with something better. Something that will make me *feel* way better than the yuck feeling I get from wasting the day checking email and surfing the web.

I thought doing something analog, something with my hands that wasn’t clicking a mouse or tapping a keyboard, might be the way to go, thus was born my idea of doing “The No-Surf Files,” aka a mini zine about whatever random thoughts are in my head when I’m trying to avoid the internet.

I did Issue #0 yesterday, and it was pretty fun and got me away from the computer. I have yet to do Issue #1 because I haven’t really been tempted to surf the internet aimlessly, and because I’m sticking pretty closely to my “check email twice a day” rule. I did check my email three times yesterday, but that’s only because I was trying to figure out the time for a school fundraiser event, and they hadn’t yet emailed the information to us. But besides that, I’ve kept myself off the email merry-go-round.

I already have several blank mini zines folded and ready to go, so now it’s just a matter of waiting for that icky internet urge to start itching, and voila! I will have my no-surf mini zines waiting for me to fill.

A Side Project That Took Over My Life

May 17, 2023 / / 0 Comments

Seven years ago, I hadn’t yet started my career as an independent author. I was still finding my way as a writer, so I decided to write a NaNoWriMo novel based on my memories of childhood.

It wasn’t a memoir, though. I’m a fantasy author. I wanted there to be some magic in this story, so I had to make it fictional. My inspiration was Ray Bradbury and his beautiful ode to childhood, Dandelion Wine, a novel I hold dear to my heart.

So I invented Sarah Lewis, a ten-year-old from California who spends the summer with her grandparents in Michigan.

(“Sarah Lewis” by the way is an homage to two icons from my childhood: Sarah, the name of the lead character in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, and Jenny Lewis, child star of the 80s and early 90s. I wished I could be them when I was a kid.)

I worked on the NaNoWriMo novel for awhile back in 2015, but then I set it aside and started work on my first published novel, The Thirteen Treasures of Britain. Treasures came out just after I had given birth to my second child (in 2016), and I was all set to start working on book two of the Merlin’s Last Magic series, when I found out I was pregnant again.

This third pregnancy threw me for a loop, and to take my mind off the mounting pressure to finish my Merlin series, I returned to my little side project.

Avalon Summer became my low-pressure respite from the demands of my day job, motherhood, and trying to write the next book in my fantasy series. When I was working on Avalon Summer, I could return to the days of my childhood: to the early 90s, to endless bike rides, to playing adventures in the woods. I would cue up my old R.E.M. albums and just write, remembering what it was like to be a kid again.

I worked on this book off-and-on for several years, just dipping into it when I needed a break from normal life.

But then about a year or so ago, something happened. I started to work on Avalon Summer A LOT. Maybe it was the pandemic, or maybe it was just the right time for it, but I became so caught up in Sarah’s story that my nice little side project became the main event. I started working on Avalon Summer all the time.

And then something else happened.

In the course of the story, Sarah finds a dusty old paperback called Gates to Illvelion. It contains some eerie parallels to her own life.

When I was writing about the paperback and its effect on Sarah, I realized I needed to make up some chapter titles, some characters, and some plot points for this non-existent book to fit into my narrative for Avalon Summer.

So I did.

And then I decided to write the entire book.

The result — Gates to Illvelion — is an homage of sorts to the pulpy genre fantasy of the 1970s. Inspired by writers such as Peter S. Beagle, Patricia McKillop, and Andre Norton, I wrote Gates to Illvelion as something ten-year-old Sarah would get immersed in and even disturbed by.

I wrote it under a pen name — A.R. Rathmann — and not to spoil things too much, but I decided to make the identity of A.R. Rathmann a plot point in Avalon Summer.

If this sounds a little confusing, well, it is.

I wrote a coming-of-age novel in which a young girl is obsessed with a fantasy book by a mysterious author, and then I went and wrote the fantasy book this young girl becomes obsessed with.

Because of the nature of these two projects, I decided to do a Kickstarter campaign that showcased the connection between these two books. Readers scrolling through Amazon wouldn’t know or understand that Gates to Illvelion is a new release pretending to be an old vintage paperback. And they certainly wouldn’t understand that Gates to Illvelion plays a role in the plot to another novel, Avalon Summer, a coming-of-age story about a girl spending the summer with her grandparents in Michigan.

These two books have a story behind their creation. The Kickstarter was my way of sharing that story.

But now the books are getting released to the general public on May 30, 2023, so I thought a blog post was in order to explain the connection between them. Buyers scrolling through Amazon still won’t know the connection between Gates to Illvelion and Avalon Summer, but I’m hoping word of mouth will provide some illumination.

Of course, each book can be read independently of the other. They aren’t connected except in a meta, self-referential way.

And I’ve kept the pen name “A.R. Rathmann” separate from my “Jennifer M. Baldwin” identity. A.R. Rathmann is listed as a separate author on the retailer websites and on Goodreads. Perhaps this isn’t the best tactic marketing-wise, but it’s how I wanted to do things.

Summer is almost here, and so are Avalon Summer and Gates to Illvelion. I hope you’ll want to sit on the handlebars and come along for the ride.

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