National Novel Writing Month made me quit my job.
Okay, maybe that isn't entirely fair or true. There were dozens of other factors that brought me to this decision. I'm overweight, my health is suffering. I don't sleep because I'm anxious about work. My performance is consistently overlooked unless there's something negative that can be shifted my way. You know, typical food service stuff. I've been doing this job for sixteen years in various states of satisfaction. Then, November rolled around. I'm a creature of habit, but that growing dissatisfaction with my career and where it has led me started to become insurmountable right about the time I started seeing things like, "101 Ways to Have a Fun, Successful NaNoWriMo!" and, "Is It Time to Murder Your Spouse and Focus on That Novel?" popping up all over.
See, most of these articles are written by morons. They're people who have a sort of generic voice, parroting back things that someone else, who maybe self-published a novel once in the halcyon days of 2002, wrote down so they could show their exasperated friends and family that, "Look, I am a real writer."
The rest of them, barring a special few with something to say and the moxie to say it well, are written by people that want to give you just enough vague, nonsensical advice that you'll decide writing for money is fucking magic and take their 12-week course on which part of Lucifer's taint you need to suck to get a book deal.
So, I thought, I gotta get in on that racket.
Then I had some work stuff go on, which I won't delve into too much because I'm still processing it. Long story short, I became willfully and gloriously and terrifyingly unemployed. So here I am, with a dozen browser pages open to different job searches and the thing I keep coming back to is the feeling that none of it will make my health or my well-being, or even my long-term financial situation any better. Because, ultimately, I don't want to do anything I'm seeing in front of me. I want to chase that dream, slay that dragon. I want to quit being such a fucking coward and put everything on hold while I go on this quest.
Typical, selfish, and invigorating because now, right god damn now, I can do it. Oh, sure, my head's all big because I had one little short story published this year but that is all I needed. I needed some editor somewhere to say, "Hey, you're pretty good at this." Since then I've been a maniac, writing and plotting and doing the things I had only sort of contemplated before, because the reality is that I've always assumed my support system, my incredible friends and family who have patiently listened to my excuses for not doing this, would get tired of me lounging about in front of a keyboard trying to make this happen. But you know what? I'm wrong.
So while the encouraging articles on how best to write your novel are being hammered out by idiots, and the world keeps spinning toward the end of this year, and I have no financial safety net except to be excellent, I realized that it was time to shit or get off the pot. Stop saying you can do it and just do it. Worst case is some hunger pains and light homelessness. Its not even that cold yet, so I think we'll be fine. I choose to shit.
Also, I have an interview for a Human Resources job tomorrow morning. Baby steps, kids.
Yours,
-JT
