February 17, 2009
If I could make a living at it, I could easily spend every minute of every working day as a full-time fiction writer. This is something I’ve discovered as I’ve gotten a little further along the road. Writing fiction as any kind of career, part-time or full-time, entails such a multitude of tasks that must be performed daily, it can easily eat every day of your working life. The biggest and most important single piece, of course, is the actual writing itself…reaching my daily word goal on whatever novel or story I’m writing. I also have a ton of marketing-related tasks, especially as a writer without an agent. This means I have to prospect for leads…editors and agents who might be inclined to buy or represent my work. Then, I have to write carefully crafted, personalized query letters to them and send the queries by e-mail or snail mail. This alone takes a good deal of time. In addition to the writing and marketing, I have business tasks to accomplish. I run my freelance fiction writing as a small business, which requires me to track earnings and expenses on a daily basis all through the year, then compile that data and file my tax returns to reflect it. On top of the writing, marketing, and business tasks, I have a myriad of other tasks, including research, outlining, blogging, and e-mailing other writers for advice and information. It’s a full-time job…or at least it will be when I start selling novels regularly. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make that happen before I’m in my nineties.
In closing, here’s another photo from my scanned archives…a picture of me in Pompeii, Italy, in 1997. See you tomorrow!
Pompeii 1997
