Integrity . . . ?

I’ve been struggling with making writing time lately.

It’s been sucky. After writing over 2,000 words a day for a week to meet my goal of finishing my latest novel by the end of September, suddenly I couldn’t seem to make twenty minutes of time to meet my goal of getting my first book re-edited before the end of the year. (Spoiler alert, I missed that deadline and have been aiming for January 31st instead.) Even when I had time, I found myself pushing it off and finding other things to do.

I started wondering why. After all, if I want to make this writing gig my job, I can’t exactly be looking at cat pics on Facebook when I should be writing. Not too much, anyway. So I took a bit of time and really dug into what my thoughts are around this. After some good digging into my own brain, I realized I’m thinking about how twenty minutes a day isn’t enough, how I can’t write 2,000 words per day unless I have a week off from my day job, and how I’ll never make a living as an author at that rate so I should probably not try.

This . . . this is some bullshit.

Where the hell are these thoughts coming from?

“You’re comparing yourself to other people,” my husband said when I talked to him about it. He said it so flippantly, as if it were completely obvious.

I didn’t think it was obvious. I don’t compare myself to others . . . do I?

A little more digging around in the brainpan revealed that yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing. (Stupid husband.)

Here’s the kicker — I’m comparing myself not to authors I know of that are, in fact, making a living writing only a book or two a year. I’m comparing myself to authors I know, personally, that are writing like demons and who are not making a living with their books. They have nest eggs they’re relying on to see them through the lean start-up years.

Why am I doing that?

One of the few answers that came easy. The authors I know of who are making a living writing more slowly are not people I know personally — not even as online friends. They’ve never even responded to one of my comments on their FB posts. They are “internet famous.” Not people I know or will likely ever meet.

The people I do know who are not making a living (yet) and are writing like demons are actual friends. I’ve met some of them. We interact online, sometimes we message privately. I’m in the same groups. They like my author posts. They seem a heck of a lot more real and a lot more like me.

So that’s who I’m comparing myself to — and I’m coming up short.

Trying to write a book while working a full-time day job and being a long sleeper absolutely sucks. I need about 9 hours of sleep, 8 at the bare minimum, or I can’t think on my feet or function. Work is technically 8 hours — but I get a 1 hour unpaid lunch break, which is not time I get to use how I want, so work takes up 9 hours of my day. My hour and a half in the morning getting ready to go and commuting to work aren’t exactly me time, and my commute home isn’t super productive or relaxing, either. I get home at 5:30 in the evening, and if I’m going to get enough sleep, I need to head to bed by 8:30 so I can shower and read a little in bed to unwind. That gives me 3 hours a day for supper, time with cats, time with husband, making lunch for work the next day, running any errands that need attention, and writing. Ha.

I either need to find a new job, or I need to lower my daily expectations.

But instead of lowering my expectations, I’ve been trying to push myself to get more done in those 3 hours, staying up late and shorting myself sleep day after day, feeling guilty about not being able to do it, then avoiding writing because I feel like shit, even when I do have some extra time. So that’s brilliant.

I wrote about this a couple months ago, in the post titled “Being mean to myself.” Pro tip, it never helps. Second pro tip, it’s not so easy to just stop doing.

In response to all this, I made a decision.

I don’t want to build a stressful career that burns me out in a couple of years. I don’t want to be a slave to Amazon’s algorithm and be pushing out new novels every month. I can’t write quality that fast. An author I admire says the indie author boom today is exactly like the pulp writers of the 40s — push out lots of content quickly and make a living. But do we remember any of the pulp writers from that era? Was any of their stuff really good? Also, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to exist on caffeine and cigarettes and typing as fast as I can and shoving some crazy shit out the door every week. I want to put time and care and craft into my novels, not speed and formula. (Not that my author friends who are writing fast are living on caffeine and cigarettes — it just seems that way sometimes!)

If I have to keep working a part-time job to support my writing, I will. If that means I can write what I want, at the pace I want, and still pay my bills, fine. Then that’s what I’ll do. I would rather write books that I want to write and have to work a little than write books I hate at a pace I hate just so I don’t have to work at all for someone else.

I don’t think my author friends hate their books or the pace they’re writing at. They seem to enjoy it. Good on them, I say. I would hate it. I’m trying to emulate it and I hate it. I can’t write at that pace — good writing, bad writing, it doesn’t matter. My brain starts to buck. I can do sprints, but I can’t maintain high word count days for too long. And in the end, the person I need to make happy is myself. Readers, as important as they are, do come second.

Just deciding that, that the ultimate goal is to write good books, and that working a little on the side is not the end of the world if I have to do it, I feel more at ease. I still intend to make a living from writing my books, I still want my job to be novelist, full stop, but if I can’t do it without sacrificing myself and my peace of mind, then I won’t.

And suddenly, writing for a few minutes each day isn’t as difficult.