Posts Tagged "The Day Job"

  • My Golden Heart Sisters Are Blogging!

    Blog

    I’ve been oh-so-shamefully silent on my own blog — suffice it to say that I have been completely drowning in work for the day job (that thing that is supposedly giving me the money necessary to support myself, even if I don’t have time to actually enjoy my earnings), and that I’ve prioritize my novel-writing over my blog-writing. I’ll get back to this soon…

    …but in the meantime, my fellow 2009 Golden Heart finalists and winners have started a group blog! We call ourselves the Ruby-Slippered Sisterhood; if you want to know why, you’ll just have to visit the blog :) Check it out: http://www.rubyslipperedsisterhood.com/rss/index.php/. I’ll be posting there occasionally, and will link to my posts when it’s my turn! And if you’re an aspiring Golden Heart entrant yourself, definitely check out the Sisterhood’s blog — we’re giving away critiques of partial manuscripts this month.

    Now, back to the day job; more later!


    | J'adore | Scenes from the Interweb | The Day Job |
    0 Comments

    Posted 21 September 2009, 2:29 pm

  • In Which Reality Stages a Slow Comeback

    Blog

    While I can’t say that I’m still on cloud nine after the Golden Heart announcement, I can safely say that I’m on cloud seven-point-five. I would still be on cloud nine if I didn’t have a day job; while my day job is fun and rewarding, it is also demanding, and the demands of the job didn’t end just because I went off and did romance-writer stuff for a week.

    However, I’m incredibly lucky that my coworkers and bosses (all the way up to my VPs) know about my writing, support it, ask about it, etc. without wanting to fire me for it. Many writers keep their aspirations hidden from their coworkers for fear of retribution, but my workplace is incredibly tolerant of this type of pursuit. That means that I could wear my Golden Heart necklace to work and get a hug from my director instead of a pink slip — and that means I can keep eating while I write, which is quite fortunate.

    A writer only needs a few tools — a computer, a dictionary/thesaurus, a printer, and a red pen for edits. But, she can greatly improve her likelihood of success if she has a supportive network of family and friends — and the chances that she will fail increase tremendously if she’s hearing poisonous whispers that destroy her faith in her dreams. I have the supportive network of family and friends, and that’s really all I need. Of course, it would be nice to expand that “support” to include someone to pay all my bills and make my bed while I write, but I won’t get too greedy :)

    If you’re a writer, or even if you’re just pursuing a non-standard career, I would love to hear your thoughts — how vital is others’ support to your work? How do you deal with the inevitable insensitive remarks that make you want to pull your hair out?


    | Lucky | The Day Job |
    5 Comments

    Posted 21 July 2009, 10:20 pm

  • Bloom Where You’re Planted

    Blog

    While my day job provides many benefits (such as a paycheck) and many frustrations (such as the sixty-plus-hour weekly commitment that pulls me away from my writing), what keeps me going back is my fabulous set of coworkers. I’m very lucky in that I actually enjoy seeing many of the people I work with; there are always the occasional people whom I avoid when I see them walking down the hall, but they are far outnumbered by the people whom I would gladly sacrifice ten minutes of precious worktime to catch up with.

    I had a meeting today with one of my direct reports, and the meeting reminded me just how lucky I am to work with these people, and even more importantly how much I just need to figure out how to balance the job and the writing and not get frustrated when either one is not going exactly right. The person I met with was an officer in Iraq and served two tours before leaving the Army and going into the private sector. As we were talking, he mentioned something that his grandmother told him before he left for Iraq — that it was important to “bloom where you’re planted.” Isn’t that excellent advice? Regardless of whatever situation you end up in, you can still strive to bloom in it.

    This is far sappier than I usually get, so I apologize for the uncharacteristic lapse. I will be back to my regularly scheduled snark tomorrow!


    | Inspirations | The Day Job |
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    Posted 12 May 2009, 9:23 pm

  • Writing, comma, How Not to Succeed At

    Blog

    The best way, hands down, to not succeed at writing is to never make time to write. And unfortunately, that is the position that I find myself in this week. Despite my best intentions, I have not written since Sunday. Three days is really not such a long break, but I’m so excited to get back to working on Madeleine and Ferguson’s story, and so a three- (or more likely, five-) day hiatus is frustrating.

    Then again, given the state of the economy in general and my expensive tastes in particular, having a day job is a good thing, even if the day job is keeping me so occupied this week that I can’t find time to write. Yes, I could make faster progress on the road to publication if I could devote sixty hours a week to it, but it’s hard to slog down that road if you have scurvy because you can only afford to eat ramen. I suppose I could give up my Sephora habit — but until they develop drugs to help ease the withdrawal pangs I would feel at never buying Nars eyeshadow or Shiseido lipstick again, I’m too hooked to drop it.

    What about you? What silly expense are you unwilling to drop?


    | J'adore | Procrastination | The Day Job |
    0 Comments

    Posted 6 May 2009, 10:13 pm

  • In Which This Author Receives a Shock

    Blog

    Sincere apologies for my silence over the past few days. It’s been something of a whirlwind (as all of my weeks are — for some reason, I haven’t had a single week in months that was devoid of chaos), and the blog was deprioritized as a result. I found out last Wednesday that one of the final-round judges for the Golden Heart wanted to see my full manuscript!

    The good news is that this indicates that the editor has some level of interest in acquiring my book. The bad news is that I was in the middle of doing some revisions, and I only had forty-eight hours to submit my full manuscript to the RWA office. Needless to say, this was cause for alarm; while none of my edits were dramatic, I wasn’t as far along as I would have liked. Luckily, I work at one of the few places in corporate America in which my boss and all of my directors are supportive of both my writing career (and yes, they know I’m writing romance) and my “real” career, and so I was able to take Thursday afternoon off to polish up my draft. Now it’s back to the grind to get caught up at work, but a request from an editor made my week :)


    | The Day Job | Thrilling |
    0 Comments

    Posted 27 April 2009, 10:02 pm