In mid-November I was laid off from my accounting job, and decided to finish my novel by year's end. Despite a huge shock to my personal life right about that time (of which there are still all sorts of aftershocks), I managed to do so. :) I wrote the final line on Dec 30th, 2016.
I'm in my revision pass now, which looks like it'll take a couple months in itself. But a couple things I've learned so far:
1. Working for yourself is far more intense than working for The Man.
I thought working for myself would be relaxing. A nice change of pace from the demands of corporate life, since I could work when and where I liked, and no uniform is required. Oh how wrong I was.
I should perhaps put "working" in quotes, because there's no guarantee I'll ever see any money for this. But that being said - when I'm working The Man and I'm at the office, I get paid for every hour that I'm there, period. I don't have to be at the top of my game. If I show up Monday after a big party weekend, and I'm hungover and working at half-efficiency? No big deal. If I surf Facebook or chat with my coworkers for an hour? Still getting paid.
My posts to this blog have dropped off quite a bit over the last few months. I'm behind with most of the blogs I read, as well as not following the news as much, and I've abandoned several podcasts I used to listen to religiously. Because I just don't have the time anymore. Every single minute I'm NOT working is time that I'm not getting paid, so to speak. Every hour of my life is now divided into "productive" (meaning may support my continuing to be alive) or "non-productive" (which feels like it's wasted entirely). It's intense. There is no such thing as "time off" or "down time" or even "slack" when you work for yourself. There's only Doing The Thing, or Not. And getting sick is a double-whammy. It makes me more jealous of my time, and I was already fairly jealous of it.
I used to work on the Methods of Rationality podcast at the office, during my lunch hour. It was a lot like getting paid to work on my podcast. Now I have to chisel out 6-8 hours of my life every two weeks, taking time away from my writing, or my friends/family, or just rest, to do so. I used to always be a full episode ahead, now I rarely get it finished more than 3 days before it goes live. I still love it, but before it was something I used to fill my "free" time, and now it is a more dearly-felt cost.
I can honestly say I have worked far harder during my last few months of unemployment than I ever worked when I was grinding away in the last decade at the 9-5 (with the exception of some very hairy Quarter-End months.)
2. Starbucks is awesome, cuz work environment matters.
I discovered pretty quickly that working at home just wasn't working for me. It was too easy to get distracted. There was always something to read, or to do. More than anything else, my bed was right there, and the nap times called me.
"How can I write well when I'm this tired? I can't. I must rest my brain, and I'll write afterwards. Whoops, it's two days later."
It just felt like such a hollow pursuit. I was floating in a strange limbo and nothing I did mattered. So I went to Starbucks.
At Starbucks, there are other humans. Those humans are always looking at me and judging me. If I am typing away, being productive, they smile, and judge me worthy. If I am surfing the internet or chatting on Facebook, they see how I am wasting my life, and scowl.
I know this isn't actually true. No one gives a shit what I'm doing, they don't look at me or my screen. But now I'm no longer in some weird dreamtime, I'm among humans. I'm grounded in the real world. And I'm reminded why I write. It's for these people around me. To some day be seen and validated and maybe maybe even admired. So I sit, and I write, and I feel good about it. I know this isn't psychologically healthy, but fuck it - do what works. Cuz in the end that's all that matters.
Also, no bed nearby, so naps are not an option. :)
Anyway, I still need to do a full revision pass, and find an agent, and find a publisher, so I'm only like halfway through the process. And I'll have to get a day job pretty soon to pay the bills too. But I'm happy to have discovered that if I ever get the chance to do this sort of thing for a living for real, I have the self-discipline to actually sit down and write a novel, rather than sliding into sloth and hedonism. :)