I’ve made a big, scary decision about my future as a writer. Up until now, I’ve been writing in my spare time in fits and starts (a fact that is readily apparent from my irregular blog posting). I’ve managed to complete and publish two books in that time, but I’m never going to build a proper audience or get my volume up if I continue to go on as I am. So I’d like to make a real attempt at getting out of my comfort zone and into writing as a full-time thing. Even if I don’t get things off the ground, I can at least be satisfied with knowing that I took it seriously and made a proper effort.
I’m taking most of 2017 off from my full-time employment. Hooray for the Queensland public service — a nice perk of working for the State Government is that I can take up to twelve months of unpaid leave and still have a job to come back to (I’m not taking a full twelve months, though). I’ve got seven weeks of rec leave I’m taking at half pay (so 14 weeks) and then I’ll take 28 weeks of unpaid leave. It’s coming up fast — my last day is 24 January. I won’t be returning to my normal employment until 4 December.
There’s a song by Abney Park that I’ve always really liked called The Clockyard. I think the lyrics are broadly applicable to my current situation.
It’s pretty scary, but it’s also exciting. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m going to manage myself.
- I’ve found in the past that I work best when sticking to a strict schedule, assigning myself a task for each hour or half-hour block of time, so I’m working on putting together a good schedule. I’ll post it up at some point once I’ve gotten into it properly.
- Another thing I’m going to be doing, apart from writing, is trying to make more of an effort to promote myself. That means, at a bare minimum, more blog posts and more of a social media presence. I’m going to do some research on marketing and get more involved with writers’ organisations (local and otherwise).
- At work half the time I’d just have fast food for lunch — I’m going to try to avoid that while working from home, so I’ve started working up weekly meal plans with shopping lists. I’m hoping that, by pre-planning my meals, I’ll cook more often and eat healthier.
- I’m even thinking that I might reward myself with a trip overseas sometime during my time off, if I am on still on track then. I’m setting myself some very achievable goals for the ten months, and it’d be nice to have something to reward myself with.
- Money is the one thing I’m not worried about at all. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and have saved up a decently padded safety net that should see me through no matter what happens.
So yeah. I’m going to make a proper go of it as a full-time writer. Wish me luck.
The man woke up and said, “I must leave…”
