On Writing
Attempting to shifting all my extracurricular activities to writing has been a useful exercise in making my priorities a lot more clear. For one, I have learned that when you don't have an end goal, it's really easy to waste time doing any random activity that isn't really bringing you satisfaction. But when you actually have a goal you want to achieve, you suddenly realize there are only so many hours in the day, and if you don't prioritize the tasks you really want to get done, they're not going to get done.
I've also learned that spending money on workshops can pay dividends if you're smart about it. For one, the other people willing to spend money on workshops are usually fairly motivated, so it's a good way to network. And two, it helps a lot with motivation if you have an event with other writers to look forward to vs just sitting in your house and staring at a blank word document. Obviously you can get carried away with this, but I might spend more money on writing workshops in the future because I've found it to be worth the payoff so far.
Writers are interesting to hang out with because a lot of them have the workingman/businessman mindset vs the salaryman mindset. The difference is dramatic. None of the writers I've met are obsessed with their 9-to-5 status, and they're committed to the hustle it takes to sell your book. This is in stark contrast with the salaryman mindset, which usually involves being really good at one thing, looking professional in meetings, and then attempting to sandbag any busy work they give you. The salaryman mindset feels a lot more
passive and cog-like than the workingman/businessman, as the later two involve more active engagement with market trends.
I've also learned there are basically three ways to pursue writing:
1. Write short stories and submit them to publications. You usually get paid $50-$500 per story for this.
2. Write the Deep and Meaningful Inner Novel you've been planning your whole life and pray a publisher cares about it enough to pick it up and do all the advertising work for you. As you might imagine, this can be a bit of a crapshoot because you're ignoring market trends. On the other hand, the Deep and Meaningful Inner Novel is, shall we say, more fulfilling to write vs the latest Harlequin werewolf romance that, if you look closely enough, is indistinguishable from PornHub.
3. Go the self-publishing route and write niche, targeted books for the Amazon eBook market. You can make pretty alright money at this if you're willing to chase the market, but also, it may not be that fulfilling to be crunching out novellas on a monthly basis only for the money.
I'm going to attempt to chase all three of these for the time being. Short stories are good practice, and getting one accepted to a publication would be fairly straightforward and good proof that I actually have what it takes to do this.
I do have an idea for a Deep and Meaningful Inner Novel that explores themes of identity and paradigms as influenced by technology planned out. It's about a PI-turned-hacker set in a Snowcrash/Ready Player One/Severance cyberpunk setting. I think I can fit it into an Amazons self-publish genre with a little research (probably a crime thriller), thereby letting myself write something I actually want to write and that readers actually want to read. (While avoiding having to write werewolf romance
)
On Good Habits
I've had a lot of habits I've been slowly changing, and the inertia has been rough. As I've mentioned in previous entries, this has amounted to improving diet & exercise and reducing screen time. For diet and exercise, that's included going to the gym 5 days a week and eating plant-based meals from home. It's taken a lot of effort to make these three habits sticky, including falling off the wagon a few times, but I have made significant progress.
Reducing screen time in particular has been difficult because most of my social life turned online over the pandemic, so reducing screen usage has lead to the loss of a lot of online friendships. This is for the best, but I'd be lying if I said it hasn't been difficult at times. I honestly go back and forth with screen usage sometimes between the positions of "the internet is bad and ruining society" to "this is the future anyway and I might as well just get used to it."
It's especially difficult in the post-pandemic word because a lot of genuinely good things have moved to Zoom. There's a large number of writing workshops on Zoom, which spares me the 30 min - 40 min one way drive I have to make if I'm attempting to do things in person in Denver. At the same time, socializing and networking on Zoom just doesn't cut it.
So trying to cut screen time sometimes feels like a Sisyphean task given the direction the world is headed. It's incredibly hard to stay
relevant without the internet. But as I've said before, your social sphere is a function of whatever environment you put yourself in. If you put yourself on the internet, that's the kind of social sphere you're going to make. If you put yourself in the bar, that's the social sphere you're going to make. And at this point, I honestly don't know which one is even better.
If anyone is curious, my average screen time per day is usually 4.5 hours, this includes everything, and most of that time is spent on worthwhile activities. The average screen time per day for an American adult is 7.5 hours, so I'm already below average.