A Different Road

I’m a working writer…
That doesn’t mean I write for a living – it means I work (have a “day job”), and I also happen to write. Such is the lot of the unpublished author, and a fair number of published authors, if my completely unscientific and anecdotal surveys are to be believed.

Here’s the thing – short of a mammoth blockbuster, it’s hard for me to imagine ever retiring from my day job for writing alone. At this stage of my life, I have too much “overhead” – the house, cars, the girls. Sure, there are things I could do to minimize and scale back, but the reality is I have invested 18 years in a successful career, and even though I’m also investing heavily in my writing (see right here Compound Interest), the return on that investment is a long way from keeping a roof over my head, or my girls in school, or keeping up my fantasy football, or funding my M:TG habit…you get the idea.

There are times when it’s nice to imagine what could have been – how things would be different if I had structured my life around my writing a lot earlier. I am fortunate that I have a career that I love and a family that wholeheartedly supports what I’m doing now, so thoughts of the “road not taken” are neither angst-filled nor bitter, but it’s still a nice daydream. There’s an argument to be made that my current productivity is a direct result of my day job: because my writing time is limited and precious, I have to make it an absolute priority, and come hell or high water, I get it in. There’s also the idea that I’m working twice as hard, and taking my creative work twice as serious, because I (feel) I don’t have the luxury of infinite time.

But as I write this, two of my girls are sitting in my home office, playing Skyrim and talking to the TV – they’re having a great time, giggling and laughing. Del is getting ready to hang out by the pool, and before too long I’m going to be grilling steaks for dinner. I was up early this morning and knocked out my revisions on BAD LAND – I’m well on my target for getting it turned back around to Carlie, and then on to my other WIP.

If this is the road I’m on now, I don’t really worry much about those I didn’t take.