September kind of got away from me in terms of posting here. I’m back at the job I quit last November when I finished my accounting degree. In February, I learned I did not like working a desk job, and I quit that one after a few weeks. So I’m back where I was a year ago, but now I have a useless degree and a student loan to pay off. It’s a huge change for me to get used to waking up at 4:30 in the morning when I spent the last six months on my own schedule as a night owl.
For most writers, the dream is to make a living from their writing and to quit that day job once and for all. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t dream of that as well. However, I recognize that it will take years of hard work to get to that point, and I’m not sure if I could take the uncertainty of it. As I have been working the last few weeks to keep up with writing my poetry prompts, Twitter stories, and editing my novel, I’ve really come to admire the people who can build a writing career while balancing a family and a fulltime job.
These people have to make their writing a priority when their time and attention are being pulled in so many other directions. It takes a lot of dedication.
My job now doesn’t pay as much as I would like, and the hours aren’t the best. But it wears me out physically but not mentally, so I can sink into a chair when I get home and write for the few hours until I have to go to sleep and do it all over again.
What I’m Working On
I’m used to November being my busiest writing month, since I’ve been participating in NaNoWriMo since 2009. This year, October might be my busiest, as I’m writing for 5 or 6 poetry prompt lists (I’m not doing all the prompts on every list), a few different daily Twitter story prompts, still trying to finish editing my novel, and I also have to figure out what I’m writing for NaNoWriMo. Past experience has taught me that I do need at least a loose outline going into the month or I end up with a bunch of half-finished short stories, not a full novel draft.
Besides the prompted poems I’m posting on my Instagram page, I’m also working on two poetry books. I would like at least half of the poems in them to be new to the books, not ones I’ve posted online. Having never done anything like this before, I decided on including 144 poems in each book. I love the number 12 (for no specific reason), and 12 times 12 is 144. One book will consist of spooky Gothic poems, and the other one will consist of woodland-themed love poems, telling of a kind of “us against the world,” “Let’s run away together” love story.
No matter how much writing I get done in a day, I always feel like there’s more to do, but I’m happy with the work I’ve been doing. I just hope I can keep this pace up through November!
Michelle Wicklow 