I’m Taking Time Off From My Day Job and Using That Time Productively (Oh Yeah!)

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As some of you may have heard, back in the fall I was planning a Christmas trip back to New Hampshire to visit family and friends…which I ended up calling off when COVID cases and restrictions ramped up.  This sucked pretty hard, and while I don’t regret calling off the trip, it’s unfortunate that circumstances forced me into making that tough decision.

Here’s the good point, though: while planning the trip, I got approved for a four-week vacation from my Day Job.  And when I called off the US trip I decided I’d still use the time off.

Quick bit of backstory: My job as an ALT on the JET Program comes with, among other perks, 20 paid days off per year that are pretty flexible, especially if I schedule them in advance.  Last year because of COVID I barely used any, so when my new JET contract started in August I found myself with a mouth-watering 29 days to use or lose as I see fit.

And I have no intention of losing them. Continue reading »

I’m Getting Ready to Write a New Novel But Not Actually Writing It Yet—Here’s Why

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My writing’s been in this weird state of transition for a long time now.  That’s because, for the first time in nine years, I’m not actively working on some sort of novel.

Instead I worked on querying MFA Thesis Novel to publishers for ten months, and in between queries worked on some shorter pieces in various states of completion.  Having time to focus on these other projects has been great, but I’m realizing how badly I miss having a bigger, more involved project to work on, and how much I want to get back into the creative process of working on a novel.

But, as I wrote about in my post a few weeks back, I’m having trouble starting.

That’s partly because this novel idea is particularly ambitious—it’s like nothing I’ve ever written, and writing it the way I’m imagining it is going to take every bit of my writing skill, in addition to a lot of skills I’ve yet to get a handle on.
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Holy Shit, I Signed a For-Serious Novel Contract!!!!!!!!111

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Hell yeah I did.

As of three weeks ago, MFA Thesis Novel, my satire about a grad school writing program, is officially signed and scheduled for publication with Vine Leaves Press in April 2022.  That means that my goal of publishing an actual novel is finally going to become a reality.

MFA Thesis Novel is about a twentysomething writer named Flip Montcalm (who’s definitely not based on me) who enters a grad school writing program (that definitely isn’t based on the one I went to at the University of Nebraska) in the barrens of the Midwest.  However, no one around him seems to like his novel, and in an world of fierce competition, Flip has to figure out how to write something that’s both meaningful and that people will actually like.  It’s a novel about fitting in, starting out as a writer, and the desolate working conditions that thousands of underpaid grad students face every year, along with what it’s like to be a lonely young artist in a strange place.

Plus there’s jokes.  And cursing (fuck yeah!).  And lots of pop culture references. Continue reading »

Here’s What I’ve Been Working On RIGHT NOW (and have been for the last few months)

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It’s been a while since I updated you on my projects in progress, so I thought I’d change that.

I started posting semi-regular updates on my creative work a few years back both to keep people updated and keep myself accountable.  If I posted that I was working on something, it felt more serious and I’d be more inclined keep working on it so I wouldn’t have to answer to my blog readers and admit that I’d been slacking off—or worse, that I’d given up.

There are a few reasons for my lack of updates—the main one being that I haven’t been working on a novel since finishing my last one well over a year ago, and not having that as a primary focus has felt…distracting.  Without a bigger project to work on Continue reading »

Here’s What I’m Working on RIGHT Now (Fall 2019 Edition)

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It helps me a lot to sit down and write about my current projects and creative goals (as opposed to just thinking about them), as well as what kind of progress I’m making toward them. This is a lot more helpful than keeping them in my head, where they swim around in the nebulous stormcloud that is my creative work life so I can’t see them with the proper perspective.

I try to be honest about my progress and setbacks on this blog because I don’t want to fall into a trap of pretending that I’m doing a kick-ass job if that’s not really the case. Pretending you’re doing better than you are is pretty unhelpful because 1) It alienates you from other people you can’t be open with, and 2) It hinders you from actually improving the way you organize your time because you’re living out a kind of fantasy where everything’s going just peachy.

Anyway, enough with the intro: here’s what I’m working on RIGHT NOW: Continue reading »

Summer Progress Report – How Am I Doing?

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It’s been…a busy few weeks, which, as I talked about last month, was entirely my own fault for taking on too much.

I’m realizing that more than anything else, my tendency to say “Yes” to things (sometimes with an exclamation point attached) is really having an adverse effect on my productivity, because not only does having more things to do quantitatively reduce my amount of free time, it also pulls me in multiple directions, giving me more things to juggle and making me exponentially more stressed.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make this problem better, and though the solution definitely involves taking on less things, making this happen Continue reading »

Life Update: I’m Swamped With Work and Things Are Crazy

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All right, gang—this is going to be quick, because as the title implies, it has to be.

I’ve had a lot going on spread across multiple fronts the past few weeks—Day Job work, creative work, daily life maintenance, and just about everything else you can think of.  On top of all that I had some friends visiting from the States last month, and while it was all kinds of awesome to see them again and take a sweet trip, taking two weeks off from creative work hit me hard.

To give you a better idea of what I’m dealing with this month, here’s a snapshot of the most pressing items: Continue reading »

Here’s What I’m Working on RIGHT NOW (Spring Edition)

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Hey all—this week has me caught in the middle of a mad cluster of deadlines, events, and a bunch of other things happening at once (lame…).  April’s also the start of the new school year in Japan, and the start of cherry blossom season, so I’ve been trying to make time for a bit of hanami as well…

With that in mind, here’s a rundown of what I’ve been spending my time on lately.  Some of it, like the TEFL class, have strict deadlines I don’t want to fuck around with, but most everything else is self-motivated as I try to get caught up after losing a lot of time in 2018.

In no particular order, I’ve been Continue reading »