The pampered life of the full-time/full-time writer

I sometimes forget how badly I want to be a full time writer. I don't mean that I'm any less passionate about the craft, or that my goals change, or anything like that. I mean that every once in a while I brush up against some bit of writing culture or the writing life and I just *burn* with this need to be doing that and living that with my whole being. It's the worst kind of lust.

At the end of Horns of Ruin I was devoting most of my non-day job time to writing. Any time I spent doing other things, I felt guilty. I looked forward to just being able to do leisurely things without feeling like I was stealing time I should be spending elsewhere. And once the project was done (for now) I delved fully into my leisure activities. That's not to say that I forgot about the joy of writing, or that my desire to go that route was waning. Just that I was enjoying not "working" 14 hours a day, between two jobs.

Now that I've started on the next project, though, I'm getting that burn again. Couldn't come at a worse time, with the house coming together and we're just beginning the ramp up into the horror that is Acquisition season. This is part of why I'm not doing any conventions this year. I recognize that there's going to be an enormous about of work for me to do, and I can't spend time recovering from or attending such things. Next year, tho. Next year.

Personally, I'm the VP of snark. I have a system for it.

Due to various technical snafus (MICROSOFT!) I'm having to quite suddenly switch from my usual data environment to a different, less familiar environment. Considerably less familiar. And I'm having to make this transition more or less on the fly. Like, last week I could use my old program and today that program is completely nonfunctional, and there are jobs piling up that have to be done. Today.

So I went out back and told production that the current queue is going to take longer to resolve than is usual, and please bear that in mind when looking for jobs. Also, because we're having to use a new process (that I am making up as I go along) they should be extra diligent in their setups. This led to production going to my boss and asking if jobs will always take extra time and require extra diligence from here on out. That is, they asked if we were intentionally choosing to implement an inferior and more time consuming process.

What's hilarious about this all is that it's a good question, considering the company. It is entirely reasonable to expect elements in this company to sit down and say "Here, we have this fully functional, efficient, reliable system. What can we do to screw this up. Are there more steps we can implement? How about we hire a VP of this particular thing? Oh, I know, let's just have a couple dozen meetings on each stage." So, yes. Reasonable to wonder if we had intentionally traded a good system for a bad system. We have a history of that.

So when I say that I'm "happy" in my current job, I can honestly say that I'm a good deal happier than I was. But I also mean that sometimes I am endlessly amused, because that's the best defense against frustration.

Well. Back to the money-burning machines. We have some money we could be burning, and we're not, and there's going to be a meeting about it later.

Meanwhile...

That was something of a pause, huh? I swore to post everyday and then didn't write anything for almost two months. Sounds about right. And I don't even have anything substantial to say now. So instead of content, I'll give you the reasons I haven't really been blogging of late.

1) A lot of my posts have been about why I wasn't happy with this or that aspect of my life. I've been kind of happy for the last few months.

2) I'm between projects. Horns of Ruin is turned in, Dead of Veridon isn't due until the end of the year, and I don't have any other contracts on the horizon. I've given myself a start date for DoV, but I'm also allowing myself some creative freedom in the meantime. I've been noodling around the edges of an epic fantasy that I don't really intend to start writing this year. Something nice to have in your pocket.

3) We're building a house. And the ramp up to that means cleaning our current house, storing all the stuff that we don't actually need to have around, performing minor repairs, and then living in a state of perpetual maintenance while we're on the market. It's a weird life to live.

So. That's why I've been quiet. That's why almost no one is going to read this post, and those of you who are reading are wondering *why* you're reading it. There you have it. Life is full of questions.