Life is changing all around me.
My sister has a toddler. My best friend is getting married soon. We’re counting down the weeks until my Kickstarter goes live. By the time you’re reading this, my job will have moved to a new library.
And in the midst of it all, I feel like I’m standing still.
I learned during my tenure in Des Moines what it’s like to be going a hundred miles an hour in life and yet never move toward anything I really cared about. For me, my day job career was always a means to an end that I hoped would be temporary. Sustain me until I made it as an author. God only knows whether that day will ever come. But just to have a career working for someone else was never the end in itself.
I recently told my therapist that I felt like since leaving Des Moines, I’ve felt like I went from being in the driver’s seat of my own life to riding in the backseat of someone else’s. Don’t get me wrong, I love the people driving and want to drive near them. But I still think that if they weren’t able to drive their own lives, they’d be as miserable as I am.
I’ve made drastic improvements, and when I look back over the past year and a half, I have every reason to be proud of myself. I may not be independent again yet, but I’ve got a job I like, which means money reliably coming in. I may not be a full-time author, but I’ve created and sustained a consistent schedule of writing 5,000 words every week and publishing a blog, a Patreon, and a newsletter once a month. That’s huge.
And yet, I still feel so far away from my goal. Mostly because I don’t even know what that goal is.
There are some specifics floating around, but the way is entirely unclear. I don’t even know how many times I’ve tried to describe the life I’d like to build, but it doesn’t get any clearer how I’m going to get there.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of a body of work. When you get to the end of an author’s life, they’ll likely have gone through a number of phases. You can watch them change through their work like the rings inside of a tree trunk. But by the end, usually they’ve got something in particular they’re known for.
Maybe they carved out their space in a particular genre. Maybe they had one topic on which they were an expert. They brought some issue to light or developed a unique way to tell a story. Maybe they introduced a sort of character or plot twist that has people emulating and riffing off them for decades or even centuries. Or maybe they created a massive body of work that was consistently within a particular genre so you always knew what you were getting. They might have written a single masterpiece that overshadowed everything else they ever made. Either way, the brand was clear.
What’s my brand? I can name tiny aspects of it from a marketing perspective. I love moody jewel tones and serif fonts. But what’s my thing? What will people remember as characterizing my work?
I have a few ideas in mind, and they have a lot to do with my style and the types of seed of inspiration that tend to germinate with me. It’s often been historical fiction, but will not always be. I want my characters to be lifelike, relatable, lovable, and intensely themselves. My language is highly visual, richly descriptive, with lots of metaphors. It can be dense, but it depends on the story.
Honestly, at the moment it’s looking like I’ll be carving out my brand by simply writing the stories I want to read. That’s how I came up with Angels Strange and Beautiful, and it’s how I choose to write anything. I can’t possibly spend the amount of time it takes to write a novel or even a short story unless I’m in love with the notion that started it all. Chasing trends or trying to mold myself into something I’m not would be like sandpaper to the psyche. It would carry the level of risk and extremity of trying to move in with a coworker you barely know. There’s a small chance it could work, but a much higher chance it will ruin your life.
So I’ve got a whiff of my brand. But what should I prioritize? What I haven’t managed yet is a sense of pace or direction overall. I’d like to get where I am producing a steady stream of blogs and paid pieces (check) and always have a longer-term project in the works. Like, one thing being edited, one thing being marketed, one thing being written.
Up till now, I’ve simply obeyed the whims of my muse. If I sit down with one idea and another is calling to me, I have two choices: follow the muse, or entertain frustration, burnout, and poor writing. Don’t get me wrong. A certain level of patience and adapting to what you are able to do is important. But always flying by the seat of my pants from one thing to another is not really a solid business plan, now is it? The time for just letting things come to me may be over. I need to have a sort of long-term plan, and I’m not sure what that looks like.
I feel like three different stories are all trying to get out at the same time, so I rotate between them based solely on which one will come to me. Which makes me really slow to get anything done. It’s like the classic cartoon imagery of two or three characters all trying to get through a door at the same time and getting stuck in the door frame side by side. That’s what my larger ideas are doing.
I wish I could just take a poll or visit some guru on the top of a mountain, but the truth is that nobody can figure this out for me. So I’ve been praying about it, and now talking aloud to you, my dear readers, in hopes of dislodging some sense of direction.
Life is going fast and I write so slow! What stories do I need to write in order to feel like I did what I was put on this earth to do? That’s the biggest question. And is this even what the Lord made me to do? Or is it just meant to be a hobby that sustains me through a kibble-catcher job that just pays the bills? If my last full-time job was any indication, I cannot abide that reality. So how do I make a different one?
This may seem like an odd thing to do, but it feels right: Would you mind praying for me? I’d like you to join me in asking God to show me what he’s made me to do, and to help me form whatever plans he’s planted in my heart. In the meanwhile, I’m also praying that he sends me the comfort my heart is currently crying out for, whatever form that takes.
Thanks for listening. And thanks for being here before I’m a known author. Hopefully one day I’ll be able to look back on a body of work that will make you proud. I at least hope I will have fulfilled the purpose that was set alight in me, even if I exit this world with hands as empty as they were the day I entered it.
Oh, and on that note, it’s my birthday! Happy birthday, me. Thirty-one years on this planet and no idea what’s ahead. I hope I can be proud when it’s all over.
