Shoot, I can’t sleep.
As an addendum to the below post, one of the things that was said regarding the road to publishing one’s work is the old axiom, “don’t give up your day job.” Setting aside two hours a day for indulging in the craft of writing was thought to be a reasonable suggestion.
It worries me, or more accurately, fills me with guilt, that I personally have put so much time into writing for the last half year, often letting other things slide that sometimes really should have been given more time and effort. On the other hand, writing has helped me cope with a few of the more emotionally demanding events that have come up in my life, and I don’t know that they would not have consumed even more of me and been more inhibiting of productivity in all other areas without my ability to reason them out in writing.
Sure, being published would be the ultimate high. But the need is not there; the burning need to write is just what it is, and this is what I can do. Maybe I must learn to limit my computer time a bit. Harder still, to limit my thinking about writing even when I’m not writing. I don’t think I have physically turned off my computer in six months except once or twice during power outages or briefly for downloading upgrade purposes or other computer needs. It must be as ready as I am to produce at a moment’s notice. It was tough to be so far away from my keyboard yesterday, and will be so again today.
I don’t know. Maybe, if I can’t restrict myself a bit, I should seek professional help. But then, I don’t make a lot of money at picture framing; I might as well, since I’d prefer it, not make a lot of money at writing instead.
UPDATE AT 6:20 AM: Via Crof at Writing Fiction, a link to an article in The Globe and Mail that offers an interesting alternative in self-publishing, making it no longer a dirty word.
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