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
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
A few days ago I attended a friend’s wedding in central Pennsylvania, where I also served as the officiant (i.e., the person who conducts the ceremony). It was a fun time for sure, and I got to meet a lot of new, interesting people while I was there.
The majority of wedding guests seemed to be in their early 30s, though there were a few Gen X-ers there as well. I also really only knew the bride and groom, so after the ceremony I found myself in a position to sit down at a random table and introduce myself to people I didn’t know. (All the weddings I’ve been to in the last two decades have been for close friends and family, so this was a relatively new experience.)
As such, when it came time to introduce myself and people asked me the “What do you do?” question, without thinking, I naturally responded with, “I’m a writer.”
And people thought that was really cool. Continue reading
Somebody asked me the other day whether I was still teaching after I left my university job in Japan last year. However, their actual question seemed to be Are you teaching full-time as your main job? which of course is a solid No.
I thought about the best way to answer, and finally replied with Yes, but not as my main job.
Whille I get most of my income from editing jobs these days, I worked as a teacher for a long time, first as a tutor and substitute teacher in New Hampshire, then at a private school in Japan, then in grad school teaching undergrad essay writing, then again in Japan. I worked other jobs in between, of course, but over my working life I’ve definitely spent more time teaching than doing anything else.
Teaching is fun and interesting to me because I enjoy tackling the problem of how best to present material to students, and how to help them build their ideas in interesting ways. The editing and coaching work I do uses a lot of those same principles as I help writers express their ideas in the fullest, clearest way possible, Continue reading
Last week, things got pretty fucked.
Okay, to be fair, nothing actually got fucked—I was just REALLY busy juggling different deadlines, appointments, and other commitments that all seemed to fall to the end of April. To make matters worse, I still haven’t entirely unpacked at my new place, so my office and much of the rest of the apartment is still a mass of boxes and piles. This meant that when I needed to find something from those boxes or piles, instead of just reaching over and grabbing it, I needed to search for it, which meant I spent a lot of time searching that could have been been spent on other things (like actually unpacking…) Continue reading
Last week in General Ian Life News: I moved to a new apartment.
The move itself was a fairly easy one, and one I’d been planning for a long time, to an apartment in the same town close to where I was living before. The move itself went incredibly smoothly, since I had plenty of help and the new apartment was so close to my old place that we could easily shuttle things over using multiple car trips. This was in sharp contrast to previous moves, where I’ve had to scramble and dash around to be out of my old place by a firm deadline.
While I’m very much looking forward to having my own place again (especially once everything’s finally set up!), in this post I want to say a warm goodbye to my old office, where I had a lot of good times and did a lot of meaningful work.
Continue reading
For the past few years I’ve found myself getting a nasty sinus cold around the first week of April—two years ago after a long day of exploring a cherry blossom park in Joetsu, Japan, and last year when I was preparing the pre-orders for MFA Thesis Novel. And this year, the same thing happened again.
I’d been getting a bit of a sore throat in the mornings and at night for a week or so, but it never lasted long. Last Wednesday, though, I found myself with a bad runny nose that got worse throughout the day, and after crashing hard that night, I woke up the next day too tired to do much of anything.
I write about this in detail not because I want to share a play-by-play of being sick (because not only is that gross, but it’s unnecessary storytelling-wise), but to emphasize that sickesses come up unexpectedly, often at bad times when we have other things going on, creating real repercussions for how we deal with them. Charging forward with your regular routine even when you’re sick is rarely if ever a good choice: not only will you not be at your best and likely make mistakes, 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
One of the reasons I like posting updates on my Secret New Novel progress is that it keeps me accountable for my own promises. If I make a promise to myself on this blog where people can see it, it makes me take that promise more seriously, so I’m more likely to follow through with it.
That’s what happened last month when I promised to finish my second draft revisions by New Years (or preferably Christmas!) so I can start 2023 off with a fresh mindset on the third draft.
Despite my best efforts, the past few weeks have been really busy, but I’ve been maintaining a steady pace of working on my Secret New Novel draft four mornings a week, with ZERO days missed in December. That’s a new personal monthly best, and I think having the firm end-of-the-year deadline has really helped me get there.
Two other things have also really helped my writing progress this month. One is of course that for Continue reading