I work full time as a government employee. Not a lavish job but it’s a job I love. Pursuing my love of writing while working? Well, I didn't know how I would do it. I have been advised time and time again that I should write full time by various authors. Let's be real, I would stress out over the money because like everyone, I owe bills that I cannot defer and can’t afford to just quit a job to pursue that. In due time, it will happen, just not now.
I am an author that has no problem being blunt in how I look at things but equally will be polite if that is what is expected. I like pure unfiltered emotions when I write. The authenticity of it breathes life into me like the moon lights the sky at night. It helps me come up with ideas, scenes, anything that makes me take a pen to paper or my hands to the keyboard.
I felt like that when I first pursued the idea for a novel. The story that I wanted to push to the front was at the time called Connected Hearts. It had a solid base but the more work that was asked to be done on it, I struggled. I worked for a private company full time during that period, and I was working 50+ hours a week compared to the 40 hours I work now. I grew to loathe the story and completely abandoned my writing. It wasn’t that I couldn’t put in the work. I was suddenly too burned out and instead of loving writing, I grew to hate all forms of writing after that point. What I did write sat on my external drives or in notebooks for years. I stopped writing in the middle of 2015. I published a poem here and there through competitions but nothing that really brought me back into the fold of writing again.
So, when did I finally rekindle that love again? Funny story, it was my graduation party for my master’s program, and I remember being frustrated about how many said they would go and didn’t show up. For context, I had 40 people RSVP and 23 showed up. The group that did support me was just the family and a few friends that did care. That night I pulled out a notebook and began writing which turned into a rant about how disappointed I was. I was five pages into this notebook (front and back of each page) when I paused and saw how much I had written. I started laughing instantly.
I realized as I started reading the rant, it had somehow changed into a short story about 2 pages in about a female who suffered from extreme loneliness and social anxiety after celebrating 8 birthdays completely alone because all who promised to be there, never showed up. My laughter turned into tears soon after because I realized I was writing again. Since the burnout issues mid-2015, I had pretty much given up actively writing all together. Writing that story again that night made me reconsider all of that. By that time, I had been working for my government position for just over a year. I decided to start slow.
I felt that this may be my one chance to fall in love with writing again. The external drive was unearthed from a box along with my notebooks. I started looking through what I wrote to see if anything drew me back from the difficult depths. One novel did and while it was complete, I spent the time doing a first round edit of the said which gave me the writing momentum back. The poems gradually came out of the editing process for this novel which I decided to make a series and that was Sakura Moon (it’s in draft version on my Ream if you want to check it out). I rekindled a love for writing while editing the series of chapters for this novel.
With this rekindled love, I knew I had to tackle a lot of new changes because I had freedom and time that didn’t exist before. I still loved gaming and that also was something I never wanted to lose either. As I sorted through the ideas of how to tackle the dilemma, my closest friend started writing his own novel. In that, I found my passion to rewrite a current series, Goddess and Her Characters.
With that, I tried to decide how I was going to continue my love of writing while full time and really, I had to tell myself one thing, don’t burn myself out on this at the same time I need to keep it alive. Some days, I struggle due to exhaustion. My full-time job can be mentally stressful and tiring but I also have a mental disorder which can at times just shatter my ability to write. I must forgive myself during those points and keep trying again when I fail.
Comments