That was always my nag-question when I was riding in the car as a kid. I'm sure my parents got tired of hearing it, but I thought it was infinitely better than the typical Are we there yet?
Neither of which have a real bearing on this post, which is intended to be a sabbatical midpoint check-up. So how is it going? Well, some good, some bad.
On the good side: my stress level is way down, I'm spending lots of time with the kids (school certainly changes that, though), I've really grown to love writing even more than I thought I would, I'm not bored -- not in any way.
On the bad side: I've been abandoned by most of my former friends, the publishing business is hard to break into and not terribly lucrative, I'm getting little opportunity to test out consulting work (I probably need to try harder!), I'm driving Paula a little crazy just by being underfoot.
When I first started to test the writing waters, it was at least partially because I had complete control of it and didn't need to step out of my comfort zone to do it. While that might be true for the actual act of writing, it isn't necessarily true for getting the work published and distributed. There must be a million manuscripts out there trying to fill ten thousand slots -- its just hard to make it happen. Of course, there is this other, interesting world of self-publishing or even exclusive epublishing -- which is breaking the old rules of how to win in this space. It's an exciting time to be an author, although the strategies to employ aren't exactly clear.
But is this where I want to stay? I'm still not sure. I want to keep my options open and still try some new things in the remaining six months of the sabbatical. Then, who knows? This space full of possibilities but lacking commitment does have some of its own appeal...
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