Writing Full Time

A few weeks ago, I printed and posted this little affirmation in my writing room:

I write full time and I am paid very well to do it. I am following my bliss.

Shortly thereafter, some staffing changes happened at work, and I was given responsibility for the program newsletter, which is sent out a few times a year to our 60+ contractors and ministry stakeholders. (Don’t you just love government jargon?) Writing is so easy for me that I took more time developing the layout and working with the graphics than I did to compose the content. I also tweaked what had already been written, then added some stuff of my own—at the boss’s behest, of course. She loved my first draft, we did some very minor editing, and the final went out on Friday.

Tuesday evenings are reserved for fiction. Blogging is so much fun that it can interfere with bigger projects, bigger being the unfinished shorts piling up on the hard drive, so I made up my mind that weeknights will be devoted to angels, demons, vampires, and the mortals invariably entangled with them. As a result of that, my historical fantasy has taken off and is nearly finished. After that, I think “Black in Back” is next because I wrote some stuff into the historic piece that, upon reflection, actually belongs with Ariel and Tess.

Black, by the way, really hates being referred to as “Ariel”.

Of course I’m not making money writing fantasy—yet—but it seems odd that within days of me getting serious about affirming that I want to write full time and there’s no reason why I can’t get paid to do it, the newsletter landed on my desk. There’s also talk of rewriting my job description to include it and a bunch of other higher level duties, which will entail a pay raise. That’s exciting for many reasons, especially since I told my exec director that I didn’t care about more money and he said, “Ruth, we have to care about it.”

In short, shut up and be grateful, Ru.

So I’ve been writing, just not blogging. I hope to get back online this week, as I like to keep current and already a couple of pre-posts need updating. Those darned Flyers, for instance …

With love,