August 30, 2007—Working for a living

I’ve been neglecting this for a little bit. It’s mostly because in the last week my attention has been on how to support myself financially. The first draft got written by totally ignoring that issue and having faith it would work out (if I didn’t take too long.) Now that I’m thinking about, I’m obsessing about it in a not especially healthy way.

I do have legitimate work to do. I’m going to be teaching some college writing courses, starting next week. So there’s plenty of planning to do that I’ve started and, even more important, navigating the mysterious waters of university administration. Millions of forms filled out, phone books of numbers dialed, and still no passwords or keys that will give me the access I need to actually meet and communicate with my students.

Less legitimate is my so-called planning for freelance writing. I let it take over all my mental space and neglect everything else. It comes out of an irrational fear of financial ruin. I need to learn to put it in its proper place.

All this is impacting my novel, but it’s probably not a serious problem if it doesn’t go on too long. Like I said before, some distance from the book is probably a good thing, and I am doing a little bit of the “review” work on it every day. Hopefully in another week I’ll have that done and then I can spread it all out on the dining room table and really take a hard look at it.

Oh, I wish I was back in the drafting stage. That was a lot more fun.