Not-writing

As a newly, self-published e-author, you could probably guess that I'm not quite to the point of quitting my day job (yet).  That being the case, I still need to do something other than writing.

What do I do to pay the bills?  Not-Writing.

For myself, and, I assume, other people trying to break into the authoring game, the world breaks down into two jobs, Writing and Not-Writing.  It doesn't really matter what the actual job is.  I could be working the counter at McDonalds, or a CEO pulling in six-figures, and it would still amount to the same thing, Not-Writing.

I had this little epiphany a while back, and at first it depressed the hell out of me.  It made me fully aware that it didn't matter what I did, or how well-paying the job was, or how happy I should be to have as good of a job as I had.  I still wasn't going to be happy with a career, unless that career involved weaving words together on paper*.

Then I had another epiphany, and as far as double-epiphanies go, this was a pretty good one.  It dawned on me that, even though I'm spending 40 hours a week Not-Writing, at least now I know what will make me happy.

Maybe that's the key to finding your way, career-wise.  Maybe instead of trying to figure out what we should be doing, we should figure out what we're Not-Doing.  Are you Not-Teaching?  Not-Farming?  Not-Singing?  Not-Accounting?  That's probably nonsense psychobabble, but it worked for me to look at it from that perspective.

Once I boiled it down to those two options, it cleared everything up for me.  If I wanted to be happy, I had to find a job that wasn't Not-Writing.  Once I knew that, it was easy to justify 4-5 hours of sleep a night while I wrote my book, (see previous entry).

Will I get to the point when I can quit Not-Writing?  I hope so.  Even if I can't, I found what I'm supposed to be doing.  It doesn't matter if I make another dime or not, Writing is my career as far as I'm concerned.  Not-Writing is just a chore that needs to be done.

  

*For the kids.  Paper was a medium that people used to use to put words on, before the Interwebs and Twitters and Facebooks came along

I don't sleep.

I should probably be in bed.

It doesn't matter if you're reading this now, or five years from now (hi future people!), odds are that comment still applies to me.

Ever since I got out of college, I started convincing myself that six hours of sleep is a full nights sleep, while four hours will work in a pinch.

Sleep just uses up too much of my time.  Like tonight, I'm staying up to wait for a task to complete on the Simpsons: Tapped Out, in order to get extra points towards exclusive Christmas items write a blog post to entertain you fine people.

My weekdays consist of getting up at 6 AM, getting the kids up and running and out the door, then spend eight hours not-writing for a living. After that, we spend the evening running to various high school concerts, gymnastics practices, Lego league, random errands, and so on.  After that, it's bath time for the kids, and bed.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

If I had committed myself to getting a good night's sleep every night, there's no way I'd have finished my book.  I also wouldn't have been able to do things like binge-watch The X-Files on Netflix or read every Marvel comic from Fantastic Four #1 to the present, in order of release date.  You know, important stuff.

Mainly, it's because I know my clock's ticking, just like everyone else's.  We have a finite number of days on this flying rock we call home (unless we develop de-aging technology and warp drives in my lifetime, obviously).  There's no do-over, there's no restore-from-a-previously-saved-state, there's no 1-ups.

So I try to put myself in my future-self's shoes, which I assume will automatically tie themselves like on Back To The Future II, and try to figure out what he's going to regret when he hits the big Game Over.  Somehow I doubt it'll be "I wish I'd gotten more sleep".

Future me's a pretty demanding, yet strikingly handsome, old man.  And when we finally meet, on the porch of his future house, brandishing his stun-gun at the neighborhood kids to keep them off his genetically modified lawn that...I don't know...mow's itself or something, I'd rather not have to explain to him everything that got left undone, just for the sake of 8 hours of sleep.

The end of the beginning

On Sunday, November 16, 2014, I wrote the following words on my Facebook page:

"It is with a deep feeling of surreal disbelief that I find myself able to say the following words:

My book is available for purchase on Amazon."

In retrospect, I would have rewritten that.  It's kind of garbled and awkwardly laid out.  In my defense, I was flying pretty high on the endorphin rush of seeing my first novel available for purchase.

Awkward or not, the statement was a true one.  Even now, it's hard to imagine that the thing is actually done.

I started writing this book in the winter of 2011.  Then I rewrote it.  Then I freaked out and abandoned it.  Then I wrote two other books.  Then I came back and hammered this one back into shape.

The result is Fractured: Arrivals.  This is the first part of a six book series that I'll be writing and publishing.  I am hoping to have the second book ready to go by Christmas of next year, 2015.  In between then and now, I'm planning to publish two unrelated books during the summer.  I'm not making any promises, but if I actually tell people a time frame, it should keep me on track.

I do have two people I have to credit for their help with this.  Without them, it never would have happened.  My wife Susan Brudvig, and my good friend Josh Wirth.

Both were kind enough to act as editors for me, pointing out what did and didn't work.  Susan also designed the cover of the book; while Josh was the one who came up with the series title, Fractured, while we were kicking around ideas.

I've learned a lot in the last few years, made a lot of mistakes, lost faith in myself, and gained it back again.  So yes, it is the end of the beginning, for Fractured as well as for myself.  I have a lot of stories to tell, and this is just the opening act.

Welcome to my undergound lair

I'm sure you're wondering why I've gathered us here today.  The answer to that, of course, is shameless self-promotion.

My name is Aaron Brudvig, and I am a writer.

There, I said it.  Can't take it back now.

It's a pretty significant threshold to cross when you go from being someone who is writing a book in their spare time, to a person who has a book completed and for sale, a second book in the re-write phase, and a third halfway written.  Once you get to this point, there's not much use in denying it any further.

Now the question is, am I a good writer?

Well, not to toot my own horn, but I like to think of myself as the equal to a young Horatio Dacks or Allen Bartsworth.  You may not have heard of them, because frankly, they don't really exist, and I simply made up the names to sound smart while guaranteeing that no one would be able to find any information to contradict my claims.

Crap, I shouldn't have typed that last part out.  In fact, I should probably delete it. That's a lot of work though.

Anyway, I've decided to start a blog to go along with this new phase of my life. Aside from the aforementioned shameless self promotion, you'll also be treated to:

-updates on the status of my current books
-occasional short stories
-musings on life
-nonsensical ramblings
-sensical ramblings
-obscure references to 80s and 90s pop culture
-pure awesomeness

I'll try to update on a fairly regular basis, and be mildly entertaining at least.

Thanks for stopping by.

Aaron