First, let me state for the record, I love my primary gig.
What I do for my employer allows me to take care of my family, which is what any man wants to do (or should I say, what we’re socially conditioned to do, but that’s another talk for another day). It affords me a level of comfort to be able to do what drives my passion: creating worlds, conjuring stories, and expanding my ever-growing literary universe.
But let’s keep it a buck: I work so I can write.
And while I enjoy that balance, I’m making one thing clear—I’d prefer to write full-time.
There’s the dream of writing full-time, and there’s the reality of writing full-time.
Writing full-time tends to be a dream for a lot of writers because we have to be realistic about the P&L statements portion of the program. If we could replace the revenue, dollar-for-dollar, and maybe add another fifty cents on top of that dollar to do what we love, most of us would take that deal in a heartbeat.
So, when I dream of being a full-time author, what does that look like? Real talk?
The baseline answer is simple: the ability to wake up in the mornings, carve out a morning writing session, grab lunch, and then crank out the afternoon session (depending on the day). Setting up conversations with book clubs, book influencers, and their audiences, interviews, my release schedule, and all the other things that I do on a part-time basis because my full-time gig takes care of the bills and supplements the infusion of cash needed to keep the literary business afloat.
Once you take away the consistent revenue (read paycheck), that’s when the rubber meets the road. To make a decent living, successful authors have to hustle. Multiple books a year, going hybrid, which means securing an agent and, hopefully, getting a few books picked up by a traditional publisher, maybe even doing some copywriting work. There’s only so many hours in a day, right?
Still, I’d love to see what I’m capable of if I had more time. I mean, sure, my Beloved could float the bills while I make the transition to a full-time author, but I like the comfortable life that we have and the ability to do things now. I’m comfortable being able to slowly build things until the revenue matches my salary. So, until then, I’m okay with the way I’ve set my life up.
At the end of the day, the way I think about it, I could always set things up for my literary career to be my Second Life, once I’ve retired from my primary gig, and then I’ll have the best of both worlds—the security of the pension and other retirement vehicles and adding literary revenue and the freedom that comes with it.
Now that would be a dream.
Looking forward to talking to you tomorrow, where I’ll talk about a core fear that I constantly battle on a regular basis: my work being misunderstood.
See you then!
Shakir
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