For Creative People Who Have to Keep the Bills Paid
I’m not going to lie: 2023 was a rough year.
Though 2023 started off on an optimistic note, and the first half went really well, the second half took a major nosedive as my productivity, organization, and overall mood went WAY down.
So what happened? How did the year spiral downward, how did I handle it, and where does that leave me in 2024?
Let the 2023 reflections begin. Continue reading
I’ve had a rough couple of months because of something REALLY bad that happened back in the fall. At first I wasn’t sure how to talk about it online, or even if I wanted to reveal it because it involved my family. Fortunately, though, the problem’s cooled way down in the past month, and in thinking about what a crazy time it’s been, I decided I wanted to write about it frankly and honestly.
What happened is a long and complicated story, so please bear with me while I explain some intricate details, simplify others, and leave a handful of moments vague to protect some people’s anonymity.
In telling this story, though, I want to share that 1) Sometimes really bad things happen that make it incredibly difficult to do creative work, and 2) Dealing with those problems, and ultimately solving them, is a vital skill.
Here’s the story: Continue reading
Big news! Last month I signed a contract with Vine Leaves Press to publish my second novel, Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers, in 2025. This is the Secret New Novel I’ve been talking about on this blog for literally years. Vine Leaves published my first novel, MFA Thesis Novel, in spring 2022 and were super-great to work with, so it was only natural that I wanted to publish Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers with them as well.
What’s Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers actually about, you ask? Well, LARPing (a.k.a. Live-Action Role-Playing) for one. More specifically, it’s about fantasy role-playing in the real world, with a group of twentysomethings on a quest to rescue a lost Commodore 64 from some bullies in the New Hampshire woods.
Also, it’s narrated in ye olde fantasy English speak, with wizards and maidens and stuff, even though it’s the real world. And the characters talk a lot about ’80s movies.
That’s the bare-bones gist. If you’re wondering why I waited so long to mention the deal in the age of same-day instant internet news, the answer is that I’ve been held up with a little Non-Creative Work Issue that I’ll be talking about in another post. For now, if you want to know more, read on to find out how the deal happened and what comes next. Continue reading
I’ve blogged before about how I avoid buying things on Amazon (especially books!) whenever possible, since I don’t want to give money to a gigantic corporation that’s not only made the publishing landscape worse for authors and small publishers, it’s wreaked havoc on the retail economy as a whole.
I avoid Amazon because I want to make better decisions about where my money goes, how I live my life, and most importantly, how I portray myself as a writer and a creative person. For me, this was about making a REALLY important decision:
Am I the kind of writer who stands up for what I believe in, or the kind of writer who takes the easy route?
When I built my author webpage, I intentionally set up the page for MFA Thesis Novel in a way that encouraged people to buy it literally anywhere except Amazon, then put a link to the Amazon page at the bottom, if readers absolutely had to get it there. This seemed like a good balance between clarifying what kinds of buying options I wanted readers to consider (independent bookstores, Bookshop.org, and other non-Amazon online options) while also acknowledging the unfortunate reality that Amazon controls an enormous share of the book-buying market, and many readers (especially casual ones) are likely to go there first. Continue reading
June was a busy month for me: I got back into working on my Secret New Novel draft (which won’t be Secret for much longer!), I had a few editing jobs that needed finishing, and I’m *still* unpacking and organizing after my move back in April.
As a result, I realized that I needed a blogging break, and took the last two weeks of June off. For several years now, I’ve been blogging regularly every week with very few weeks missed, but during June, blogging felt less important than the other, more urgent matters demanding my attention.
Of course, the world didn’t come to an end because I didn’t blog for two weeks. Instead, I felt more in control of my workload, and felt like I was prioritizing based on what needed to be done.
Continue reading
Last Saturday I went to the New Hampshire Writer’s Project yearly writer’s conference, the largest writing conference in my area. It was a chance to hear a keynote speaker, participate in writing workshops, and learn more about marketing and promotion.
All that stuff was pretty useful, I guess (read: it was a lot of stuff I already knew), but one thing about the conference made me really, REALLY glad I went: the chance to meet people.
I wrote last week about how you present yourself as a creative person when you’re meeting people in social situations like weddings. This applies even more in professional situations, where people actually WANT to know about your creative work and expect you to present yourself as a creative professional. These situations can be even easier, I think, because in these situations, people are actively interested in learning about the work you do, since it’s potentially in the same realm as what they do.
In this post I want to talk a bit about how I’ve tackled networking and conference-type situations over the years, what I’ve learned, and where I screwed up.
Continue reading
Have you ever noticed how some people tend to persevere through challenges by doing their best, while others see challenges as beyond their reach and give up?
Think about the last bad day you had. Maybe you got chewed out at work, something went wrong with your computer, you made a mistake at home, or you had a fight with a friend. Maybe you found yourself in a situation where there seemed to be no way out, or where a solution seemed completely outside your reach.
When the bad day was over, did you think about ways that you could actively work to improve your situation? Or, did you simply accept what happened as inevitable, as being completely outside of your control?
The difference between the two lies in Fixed Mindsets and Growth Mindsets, a concept pioneered by Stanford social scientist Carol S. Dweck about how ingrained patterns of thinking affect our ability to deal with challenges Continue reading
The title says it all: last Wednesday at approximately 11:00am Eastern Standard time, I finished Draft 3 of my Secret New Novel.
This comes after several weeks of careful planning, when I counted out the number of writing days necessary to finish Draft 3 if I edited at the rate of one chapter per day. Though my initial plan was to be finished on Monday, February 27th, some extra difficulties with the final chapters put me behind, so I needed the extra two days to bring the ending up the level I wanted.
The February 27th deadline wasn’t a firm one by any means—it was more of a way to keep myself on track so I could plan the weeks leading up to finishing (which included mostly writing days) and the weeks after I finished (which will include mostly typing days). So, I made sure to build in a few extra days where I could write in the mornings if I needed to.
Draft 3 is REALLY important because it’s the draft I’m going to send to beta readers (basically, readers who’ll take a look at the full novel draft with an eye for giving feedback). It also represents the point where I’ll finally, at long last, reveal what the Secret New Novel is actually about on this blog, which is pretty exciting (stay tuned!). Continue reading
It’s been a while since I updated you on my Secret New Novel progress, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been hard at work.
Back in December I reached a crucial point with my novel: I finished the Second Draft that I started back in August. The Second Draft solved a LOT of the problems that were plaguing the First Draft, which was really rough and full of holes. The Second Draft, in contrast, eliminated some unnecessary scenes, fleshed out a lot of vague ideas, and ironed out some major issues that made the rough First Draft, well, rough.
After finishing the Second Draft I took a two-week break for Christmas and New Years, which I also spent getting caught up on miscellaneous projects, tasks, and cleaning. This was also important because it gave me some space away from the novel and helped me come back to it in January with a fresh perspective.
And that fresh perspective was incredibly helpful. Continue reading
I think a lot about some advice I got from the Youtuber and speedrunner Karl Jobst during our Day Job interview: Everyone in a creative field should be using Youtube, because whatever you’re doing, it can only help you build your platform.
There’s a lot of truth to this. On one level, people watch a lot of YouTube—like, billions of people watching billions of videos racking up zillions of views. The YouTube algorithm also drives viewers to keep watching, to check out new YouTubers, and to watch videos related to what they’ve already seen. So, not only is YouTube a HUGE outlet for sharing your work, but it can also help you reach people in new ways that can potentially be fun and natural.
Plus, YouTube advertising is like, an enormous industry that helps creators earn real, folding money, if that’s the direction you’re headed in.
On my end, though, I want to be a writer, not a YouTuber, so a big part of me doesn’t want to get wrapped up in the process of prepping, filming, editing, and hyping videos all the time, since I’m already busy enough as it is.
This begs a really important question: Is there a way for creative people to do more with internet video without it becoming their main focus? Continue reading
So I’ll admit, I’m a little behind on the blogging game: after taking some time off from writing and creative work for Christmas and New Years, I returned to But I Also Have a Day Job last week to write about my New Years Resolutions.
Thinking about the coming year also got me reflecting on the previous year and what I’ve been getting done (I made a similar post for what I got done in 2021 too). In a lot of ways, 2022 was my biggest year ever as a writer, both in terms of accomplishments, and making positive life changes. However, it’s easy for me to forget that when I’m busy or having a stressful time, which is why in this post I decided to list out my accomplishments for 2022.
In total, that list came out to 8 different accomplishments—and as much as I love Top Ten Lists in the David Letterman sense, it didn’t seem right to force two more in just for the sake of aesthetics. It also didn’t feel right to put these accomplishments in order of importance, so instead I’ve listed them out chronologically to form a mini-story of what my creative work year looked like.
So without further ado, here’s what I got done in 2022… Continue reading
Happy (late) New Year, all. I spent most of December working through a pretty big miasma of, well, stuff.
Biggest of this was finishing the Second Draft of my Secret New Novel, though I also kept busy with some bigger editing jobs, personal projects, and a whole load of Christmas shopping.
All of that combined to burn me out in a pretty big way—I just barely got all of my gifts wrapped in time for Christmas, enjoyed some fun celebrations and holiday gatherings, then spent the last week of 2022 taking it slow, which I very badly needed.
What does taking it slow mean? In my case it meant sleeping in, taking some alone time, and enjoying time with family and friends, in between some light personal and work projects and some much-needed cleaning and organizing. It wasn’t quite a vacation, since I still did some work, and I even picked up a last minute editing job that a client needed for an early January deadline, even though I’d told myself I wouldn’t be taking on new jobs Continue reading