After writing yesterday’s post, I had more thoughts about the do/don’t quit your day job argument and why I have such mixed feelings.

One big thing that I don’t think most people dreaming of being a full-time writer realize is that having more time to write probably won’t result in making more money from writing (with some exceptions). That’s because you’ll be fortunate to get one publishing slot a year, which means that if you can write one book a year while having a full-time job, you’ll be able to write as fast as they can publish you, so writing more won’t do you much good. Maybe, if you’re really lucky/good/successful, you might get two slots a year, like if you do a spinoff series (which requires the initial books to be successful), or if you write two different kinds of books, like adult and YA. The big exception is category romance, where the top writers can get four or more books a year published. And, of course, with self publishing you can publish whatever you write. Otherwise, don’t count on being able to boost your writing income by all that much by quitting your day job and having more time to write.

The main reason to quit your day job is for physical, mental, and emotional health. You may be able to keep up with the publishing pace while having a day job, but once you’re writing for publication, writing-related activities will eat up more time, and that time will have to come out of either your free time or time you previously used for writing. There are editorial revisions, copyedits, galley proofs, reviewing cover copy, researching ideas for covers. When the book comes out, you may be asked to write guest columns or blog posts and do interviews. You may be asked to read books to provide promotional blurbs. At some point, when you’re having to devote most of your waking hours to either your day job or your writing job and you’re even using your vacation days for writing conferences, conventions, travel to booksignings, or writing when you’re on deadline, something’s going to give. Your relationships may suffer. Your health may suffer if you’re not getting enough exercise or sleep.

And your work may suffer. That, I think, is the main argument for quitting a day job. You can’t write well when you’re burned out. If you’re not able to live life, if you don’t get to read for pleasure or do anything that isn’t work-related in some way, your creative well may empty and not be refilled. When you’re pressed for time, it’s harder to dig in as deeply as you probably should. For instance, right now I’m reading an entire book to research the backstory for the heroine of the book I’m plotting. Most of what I learn may not even show up in the book other than in the first few pages (the “ordinary world” part of the story), but I think it will help me get into that mindset and flesh out the character. Writing full time, I can get through this book in two days while also doing other work. If I were fitting this in around a day job, it would be a week’s worth of reading. It probably wouldn’t be worth a week of writing time to read this book. That might not make a huge difference in the finished book, but I think it will be richer from having done this.

Leaving the day job means that you have time for a life in addition to work, and you aren’t as pressed for time to work, so you can dig into your work to make it even better. You can also deal with more of the business stuff without sacrificing writing time.

But you can’t relax and enjoy the benefits of not having a day job if you’re worried about finances, which is why it’s not a step to take lightly. It’s also not an all-or-nothing situation. My last two years of my day job, I worked out a deal with my boss to telecommute and work semi-full time (I still counted as a full-time employee for benefits, but I was working 30 hours a week, and being paid part-time meant I had a hard stop on the number of hours I could work, so it drastically cut my working time). I had reached the point of burnout because my job had become something like 60 hours a week with a lot of travel, and I wasn’t able to get any writing at all done even though I had publishers asking to see something from me. I broke down in tears in a staff meeting when we were allocating client work and it came down to me being scheduled for more than 200 billable hours in a month. I actually tried to quit then, but my boss talked me into staying and worked out a way for me to stay but also have time to write. Something like that is worth a shot. Depending on your commute, just getting to telecommute a few days a week could free up hours of time. If you’re making money from publishing, you may be able to afford to take a pay cut in exchange for cutting a day of work a week or going to part time. There’s also freelancing, temping, and contract work.

Mostly, it boils down to what allows you to be both sane and reasonably financially secure. I guess my measure of when to quit the day job would be when you’ve got at least two years of living expenses saved up and when you feel like something has to give — when either your day job doesn’t allow you the time you need to write or you have no life other than work and writing. It’s a very individual thing and will depend on your family situation, your degree of introversion, how much you love (or hate) the day job, whether continuing that career is a viable thing, etc. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to quit to have a career, but don’t let anyone scare you away from making a move that might save your sanity.

One of the big discussions going on in author Twitter, aside from the editor-turned-author who apparently faked his resume, the deaths of his entire family, and cancer in order to boost his career, is about something another author has said about authors needing to take the leap and quit their day jobs if they want to get ahead or write well, or something like that.

As a writer who hasn’t had a day job for 17 years, I have thoughts about that. My career probably falls into the category of “don’t do it this way” and isn’t at all typical.

In my case, quitting my day job wasn’t really a choice. I got laid off, and since at that time just about everyone in my field was getting laid off, the odds of me being able to get another job were slim. There were a lot of people competing for a very few available positions. One of my colleagues laid off on the same day took a couple of months to get a new job that was a step down from where she’d been and then got laid off from that job and the next job before she had to move to another city to get the next job (I think she’s on about her tenth job since then). I was in a terrible position to try to become a full-time novelist, since I hadn’t sold a book in years and the category line I’d been writing for had folded. I had an agent, but the book she’d submitted hadn’t sold and there had been no response on the follow up book (I later learned that she may not have actually submitted it, since editors she supposedly sent it to had no idea what I was talking about when I met them later, but that’s another story and I have a different agent now). I’d just come up with the idea for the book that became Enchanted, Inc., but hadn’t started writing it and had no idea whether there was even a market for it.

On the other hand, I’d already bought a house and had a relatively new car that I’d paid cash for, so I didn’t have to worry about being able to show employment for a credit check. I had a freelance writing gig that pretty much paid my mortgage. I had no other debts. I’d been saving money all along. I’m generally pretty frugal, so as I got raises, I maintained my old lifestyle and put the extra money in savings. I had my direct deposit set up to automatically put a chunk of my paycheck into savings. All the freelance money and any royalties or book advances went straight into savings. I’d been working for a division of my company that had previously been a company bought out by my company, which meant I got some profit-sharing bonuses as part of the buyout agreement, and all that went into savings. When I factored in my severance payment, I had about three years of living expenses saved up, not even counting my regular freelance gig. The day after I got laid off, before I’d even made any decisions about what to do, I started getting calls from former clients wanting to hire me as a freelancer. I had my first interview for a freelance assignment the Monday after I got laid off on Thursday. So, I didn’t really quit my day job to be a novelist. I got laid off from my day job and decided to freelance as a marketing communications writer to give myself the chance to try to be a novelist.

I did taper off on the freelance work after I started selling books, but I was able to keep that steady gig for the first ten years or so of freelancing. There have been years when I dipped into my savings, and there have been years when I added significantly to my savings. I’m lucky that I got a health insurance plan soon after I got laid off that’s grandfathered. It doesn’t contain all the ACA benefits, but most of those are benefits I don’t need and it’s significantly less expensive. We won’t even get into how ridiculous it is that healthcare is tied to employment. That’s an entirely different discussion.

That’s how I’ve made it work financially. How has it worked creatively? I don’t know that I write significantly more than I did when I had a full-time job. My daily word count when drafting is about double, but I don’t make myself work weekends now, while I did spend most of my weekends writing when I had a full-time job. Mostly what I gained was mental and emotional energy. I’m on the extreme end of the introvert scale, and going to an office where I spent the day around people utterly drained me. I would come home from work and fall asleep on the sofa even before dinner if I wasn’t careful. When I started writing seriously, my social life dwindled to nearly nothing because I didn’t have the energy to see people in my free time and still be able to write. Writing full-time gives me the chance to do something other than work and write. I still don’t have that active a social life, by choice, but I get out a fair amount, just due to choir, church, several social groups I’m involved in, etc. I have time for music, to read for pleasure, to exercise, to cook. I think I’m a lot healthier than when I was working all day in an office, then coming home and sitting at my desk after microwaving something for dinner. Not having a day job means I feel like I can breathe.

I do think that writing full-time improved the quality of my work. I feel like I have the time to dig deeper in developing stories and in editing/revision. I don’t think I could have managed what I do now with things like reading the last draft out loud. It would take me about a year or more to write a book like Rebel Mechanics if I had to do it part time because there’s just so much research involved. When I’m doing research for a book like that, I’m spending hours a day just reading. I suspect that if I were having to do it part-time, I would skimp on the amount of research and preparation. I can devote my brain all day to my story and characters, even if I’m not actively writing, and that’s something I couldn’t do when I spent the day at the office.

I don’t know how anyone could do the kind of promotion that’s necessary today with a full-time job. My books published while I was working were category romances, so they were only available for one month. There might have been an intense month of booksignings and message board posting, but then you were done once the book was off the shelf. Now books stay out there, and there’s social media, blogging, and all that. It’s nice not having to take vacation days to go to conventions or to travel for book events. I can accept gigs to speak at schools and libraries without fitting them into a work schedule.

I really don’t think I’d have the writing career I have today if I’d gone looking for — and found — another job instead of deciding to give writing full time a shot. I might never have written the books I’ve written. I’m not sure I’d have actually stuck with writing because I was so discouraged then that I was on the verge of giving up. Realizing that I had to make it work before I ran out of money was wonderfully motivating. I loved my freedom so much that the dread of going back to an office job made me very determined. I think it would have been easier to just give it up, work full-time (if I could have found a job), and use my free time for fun. I’d probably be more financially secure now, but I might also be utterly drained and unfulfilled. And then there’s the issue that there really weren’t jobs in my field and I hated my field. I probably would have had to try to change careers and start over in something else at a lower level and work my way back up.

What it boils down to is what works for you. Every person’s situation is different. Everyone’s tolerance of uncertainty is different. I know of a lot of people who have been far more productive — and successful — than I have while holding down demanding day jobs. But then I’m not sure I’d have managed to keep writing at all, other than maybe as a hobby, if I’d gone looking for a job when I got laid off, so I’d have been even less productive and successful. Then there are things you don’t control that can change your circumstances or alter your decisions. No one can say “you must do this!” and have it apply to everyone. I disagree with the guy saying you must quit your day job, but then I also disagree with all the people saying quitting a day job is a bad idea.

I’m getting close to the end of my week of proofreading, and my voice is getting tired from all that reading out loud. I think this may have to be a quiet weekend, and fortunately the choir isn’t singing Sunday, other than the usual hymn-type stuff. Then I’ll be done with editing for a while and can be creative again.

There’s nothing like having something tedious to do to really spark creativity. It’s like your brain is tempting you away from what you need to do. But I will prevail!

I’m already seeing the movie of the next thing I want to work on in my head. I’ve got the opening scenes more or less mentally written. I have a lot more to figure out, though, before I’m ready to start work. I suspect I’ll really fall into a research rabbit hole because there’s a lot of stuff I have to learn about to make this work, and the trick is to be honest with myself about what I really need to know for the book and what it’s just fun to learn about. I may be on the verge of developing a new hobby I don’t really need.

That’s one of my favorite things about this line of work. There’s always something new to learn about and explore. For my books, I’ve learned about business, about the history of various locations, lots of folklore, a number of areas of history where school barely scratched the surface, clothing, technology, philosophies, various historical figures, etc. I’ve read a wide variety of novels that I might not have read otherwise. It’s almost like each book is a new advanced degree.

And that’s not counting the stuff I try to learn in general, like psychology (for character development), personality (ditto), writing craft, business practices, marketing, etc. I’m currently trying to figure out Excel. I’ve been doing my bookkeeping using tables in Word, which you can use like spreadsheets and wondered if I’d get more function in Excel, but then I discovered that Excel is a big battery hog. My laptop was draining a lot faster, and a diagnostic pointed to Excel (and battery life went back to normal after I shut down Excel). So maybe that’s not something I want to spend a lot of time learning. It’s probably overkill for my needs.

I do think that a certain degree of natural curiosity is essential to being a good novelist. If you don’t like looking things up and learning, you’re either not going to write something vivid and realistic or you’re going to hate doing what it takes to flesh out your characters and your world.

Book Internet has been all abuzz lately with furor over Marie Kondo’s advice about clearing out books. I haven’t seen her TV show, since I don’t do Netflix (too busy reading), but I have read her book, and I suspect that the people getting upset about her advice haven’t read her book because I thought her advice made a lot of sense.

For one thing, she never says you should have just 30 books. She says that as you go through the process of deciding which of your possessions truly “spark joy,” you’ll start to get the sense of the ideal number of possessions for you, what makes you feel happy and peaceful. For her, she’s realized it’s about 30 books, but she recognizes that some people, particularly writers, will need more.

The thing that I suspect is really getting to people is her idea that you shouldn’t have a lot of books you haven’t read, that if you don’t read a book soon after buying it, you probably aren’t all that interested in reading it and don’t need to keep it.

That actually makes some sense to me, but I don’t really have an ordinary To Be Read pile in that I didn’t buy most of my books. For someone who reads as much as I do, I don’t buy a lot of books. For the most part, I buy a book when I want to read the book, and it’s only traffic laws that keep me from reading it on the way home from the bookstore (I don’t even like Amazon because when I want to read a book, I want to go to the store right then and buy the book, not wait for it to be shipped to me). I’m actually more likely to get books from the library, so the books I buy are the ones I already know I’m going to want to keep, or they’re books I’ve already read and know I want to have my own copy of. The exception is my friends’ books that I buy to support them, usually at conventions or booksignings, and then they may or may not be something I want to read NOW or even something I’m super interested in reading. I don’t do a lot of book-buying sprees of buying random things that look kind of interesting, other than reference books at library book sales.

Most of the books in my Strategic Book Reserve are books I didn’t buy. One of the lovely things about being a writer is that people want to give you books. Writers read a lot and talk a lot about books, so a good way to get a book talked about is to give it to writers and hope they’ll talk about it and spread some buzz. If you go to writing conferences, you frequently get given a tote bag of books. Publishers may host signings where the books are free. At my first few conferences, I kind of went nuts with all the free books, but then I learned that I wasn’t likely to read them all. Now I’m very selective and only take the ones that really interest me.

But I still have a lot of books I haven’t read, and I’ve started sorting through them, being brutally honest with myself about whether or not I have any interest in reading them. Most of the ones I’m getting rid of are romance novels I’ve had for more than twenty years, and getting rid of those has been a weirdly emotional process because it means really facing my own goals and my choices.

My ambition has always been to be a fantasy or science fiction writer. I got sidetracked into romance during the summer after I graduated from college, when I was stuck on a farm while I looked for a job. There was no library in town, and the nearest bookstore was at least 15 miles away. Not that I had the money to buy books or the transportation, since my car had become unreliable and I had to borrow one of my parents’ cars to go anywhere. So, I read what was handy, which included my mom’s stash of Harlequin and Silhouette romances. I liked a lot about them, but didn’t ever find one that had me saying “yes, this is it, this is what I like,” so I had the common wannabe writer reaction of “I could do this better” and set out to try. When I did get a job and moved to the city, I looked for writing groups and stumbled upon a Romance Writers of America chapter. It was about the only really substantial writing organization that taught about the business and the craft. That strengthened my career goal of writing romances. The problem was, I hadn’t realized the difference between “I like this thing, and I think I could do it better than some of the people who are doing it” and “I like some things about this but don’t really like it, and I want to write it the way I like it.” I had some success, but I’m a classic overachiever, so I managed to power through and actually do it in spite of not liking it and not being all that suited to it, but it was a massive struggle. It was only when the romantic comedy chick lit books showed up that I realized that what I actually liked wasn’t genre romance. Then I got the idea to add magic and remembered that what I’d really wanted was to write fantasy.

Facing all those romance novels I’d amassed during that time when I was trying to be something I wasn’t meant facing the fact that I might have delayed my own career by sticking to the wrong thing for so long. It meant addressing my dishonesty with myself, my sense of failure, the sense of letting people down. It meant noticing the friends I’d had and lost when I drifted away from that world and the hurt that came from realizing that they didn’t seem to have missed me at all. But then it felt really good to be able to just hand those books over to the Friends of the Library for their sale and get all those old reminders out of my house. Clearing out the To-Be-Read books I will never read has made it easier for me to see and keep track of the books I might read, the more recent fantasy books I’m getting at conferences now, the ones I carefully choose out of all the ones in my tote bag.

Meanwhile, I’m going through my bookcases and rearranging the shelves, which means sorting through my old books, and I’m trying to be honest with myself about whether I’ll really re-read something, whether having that book makes me happy or whether it’s just taking up room on my shelf. I know I’ll end up with many times more than 30 books, but I think I’ll be much happier when the books on my main shelves are all things I’ve read, loved, and want to read again and when the To-Be-Read shelves are manageable enough that I don’t feel oppressed by them. I think that’s all Marie Kondo seems to be trying to teach people, so maybe we could ease off on the cries of “monster!”

I’ve been trying to use my time more productively, so even if I’m procrastinating, I’m still doing something worthwhile. As an alternative to clicking around on social media while I’m putting off doing something, I dug into my files and found a bunch of online courses I took about a decade ago. Some of them, I actually remember taking, but I’ve changed and my career has changed, so my answers to all the homework assignments are totally different. Some I don’t even remember taking. If I really don’t want to do whatever it is that I should be doing, at least I’m reading this material and doing the exercises, which is moderately helpful. It’s also been good this week since I’ve spent much of the week waiting on a plumber. I had an appointment on Wednesday, and when the appointment window passed with no word, I called, and they thought my appointment was Thursday (I’m almost certain it was Wednesday because I took the first open slot after the holiday). Then Thursday they called and said one of their trucks broke down, so could I reschedule for Friday. Now I’m waiting yet again. I can’t really focus on writing when I’m waiting, so doing these courses is a good way to spend the time.

Anyway, one of the courses was on finding and nourishing your “muses.” I’m not sure why I have these materials because I’ve never been that big into the “woo woo” side of writing. I haven’t named my muse, I don’t talk about “the girls in the basement” or anything like that, so I doubt I would have paid for this course. It must have been a bonus offering or something that came with a writing group membership. But the theme of the year is exploring, so why not?

The course encouraged us to really visualize our muses — the creative part of our subconscious — and then that will allow you to figure out how to feed and care for them so they can be even more creative and you can learn to listen to their input. I’ve never really thought of my creative side other than as The Voices (as in “the voices in my head said I should do this”), but I decided that if I have muses, they’re a group kind of like the Inklings, that group at Oxford that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. I imagine a group of professors hanging out in pubs and tea rooms, chatting about fantasy by the fire over cups of tea, or else they take long rambles around the countryside, making up stories as they go. Feeding these muses would involve going to libraries and bookstores, sitting by the fire with a cup of tea, or taking long walks.

Since it was a cold, dreary day yesterday, I decided to take “feeding” literally and made crumpets and tea to have by the fireplace (my fireplace is filled with candles so I can get the warm glow without the hassle or mess). I don’t know if it sparked any creativity, but it was a fun break in the day and I still met my working time goal (the crumpets have to rise for about 45 minutes, which put a nice timer on a writing session).

Now I’ll have to make time for other things my professors might enjoy.

I am tentatively planning the Epic Closet Purge this weekend. I need to do the seasonal closet changeover, anyway, as the old suitcase full of my winter clothes is currently sitting in the closet floor, where I’ve been pulling things out as needed. I need to pull the summer things out of the closet to make room for the winter things, and that makes it a good time to really evaluate the summer things as I take them out and the winter things as I put them away.

When I’m trying to clear out my closet, I have a bad habit of not wanting to get rid of anything. Either I’m still wearing things (whether or not I should) or I have sentimental attachments based on where I got things or where I’ve worn things. Sometimes it’s good when I stumble upon something I haven’t worn in ages and realize it makes a good outfit with something else, so it’s like shopping in my closet. But other times it means I’m hanging on to things I never wear. Then when it’s time to get dressed, I stare at a closet full of things I supposedly love too much to get rid of and wail, “I hate all my clothes and have nothing to wear!”

The “tentatively” part is because I’m really on a roll with this book I’m working on. I know what will happen several scenes ahead, and I’m having fun writing it. I want to be writing rather than having to force myself to write. When I’m supposed to be writing, I often have cleaning and organizing urges. I desperately want to purge and organize my closet. Now that I really need to purge and organize my closet, I desperately want to write.

So, I may not quite get to the full-on “take everything out and assess each item as to whether it sparks joy in you” purge. I may get rid of a few of the obvious things while I do a seasonal swap and then get back to writing. And then when I’m working on something else, maybe I’ll act on the “I must organize my closet” urge.

I’ve always rolled my eyes at those “I get up at four and get all my words done before the day starts” writers. I’ve also rolled my eyes at the advice to get started on writing first thing in the morning, before you do anything else. I’ve never been much of a morning person. Even when my body clock started to shift last year, I wasn’t what real morning people would consider a morning person, and getting up earlier didn’t mean I started thinking earlier. I felt like I needed time to ease into the morning. I like to read the newspaper over breakfast and tea. Reading e-mail and various social media feeds was a way to warm up my brain and get going.

But I’ve been reading a number of things lately about getting started first thing in the morning with the most important thing you need to do, and I’ve seen testimonials from other writers about the difference it made to write first before doing anything else. I’ve been doing that somewhat over the last week, but I really dove in yesterday.

I still eased my way into the day somewhat, since I read the newspaper and ate breakfast, then took a walk. During the walk, I brainstormed a bit about the book I’m working on, imagining scenes and thinking about my characters. When I got home, I wrote down the things I’d thought about. Then I started writing. I managed to get half my target word count done before lunch, and I still managed to read my social media feeds and post a few things. I had time before lunch to practice some of my choir music. After lunch, I shut off the wi-fi again for another good writing session, and instead of the reflexive check e-mail, check the feeds break, I did a little tidying around the house. By the end of the day, I’d written more than 6,000 words, and I still had a little free time before the end of the work day.

The funny thing was, I don’t feel like I missed out on anything. I did more of what I wanted to do when I wasn’t wasting time doing mindless stuff. I don’t know how much of that has to do with writing early, but I think that helps with getting started. Starting is always the hardest part, breaking out of what I call the “doom loop” of reading the feeds, posting something, then going back to see if anyone’s responded or posted anything new. Once I’ve started, keeping going is easier, and starting before doing anything else does seem to help.

So, I’m sold. I guess I have a new work schedule.

It’s deadline week, So I’ll be digging in and focusing on my work. Not that it’s a do-or-die deadline. The final book is due in January. But I want to have time to revise it and also enjoy the holidays, so I’d like to finish this draft by the end of this week. I’m off to a good start. I got up early this morning and have already walked a couple of miles and written a couple of thousand words, along with planning out what I want to write today.

It’s a really nice day, so I’ve been enjoying Patio Office. That started when I thought I’d have a cup of tea on the patio after my walk while I did some brainstorming, then I decided to just haul the laptop outside and work. That way, I can enjoy fall and still get my words done.

While I enjoy optimizing things, I also know that it’s good to shake things up every so often. Ruts are bad for creativity. I also like to take advantage of my flexible working conditions. I don’t have to sit in an office all day. Moving around keeps things fresh. I haven’t tried writing in public, though, since I’m easily distracted. I don’t think I’d get much done in a coffee shop, though I have gone to the coffee shop by the library to brainstorm and plot. I’ve gone to parks for brainstorming and plotting, too, especially when I need to be near water. Fortunately, I live near a lot of water, so it’s easy to find a place to sit by the water and think. Patio Office, taking my laptop desk onto my patio, is my way of getting away from the house to write. The wi-fi extends outside, but I don’t really think about going online when I’m outside, so I’m less likely to have the impulse. I can’t see any books I want to read or housework I need to do, so my only distractions come from nature, like watching the lizards sunning themselves, the snails creeping their way up the trellis, or the flowers blooming. And sometimes the mosquitoes that need swatting. My morning glory didn’t make it this year—between caterpillars and whiteflies, it got stripped of all its leaves—but my mum is blooming for the third year in a row.

It sure beats a desk in an office.

I totally forgot to post yesterday. I was so excited to get started writing and pleased with myself for being ahead of schedule — and then last night I realized that I was ahead of schedule because I skipped something. Oops.

But it was a really productive day. I wrote 5,000 words, planned today’s writing, and did some research reading for a future project.

Unfortunately, as tends to happen in this phase of a book, that research reading collided with an idea fragment to come up with a whole new story. It’s not ready to write, but it could be fun.

And then a conversation with my agent brought a very old (like, 20 years ago) story back to life in my head.

Yep, I’m in the middle of a book. That’s when I seem to be at my most creative. Ideas are flying around, demanding attention. The trick is to write down what I know when they hit me, then I realize they’re nowhere ready to write, and I can get back to what I was doing. Until the next idea hits.

I need brain blinders.

I’m finding it does help to turn off my wi-fi on my computer when I’m writing to stay focused, except the main character in the book I’m working on tends to go into research mode as a way of dealing with things, and when she looks something up, I need to run that same search to see what she might find. It’s not always what you’d think. Then it takes discipline to not go “oh, I’ll just check my e-mail while I’m online,” when turns into “and then I’ll pop by Facebook and Twitter.”

I probably won’t hit 5,000 words today because I have choir tonight and need to get a lesson plan together, but it would be cool if I could manage it.

This was supposed to be yesterday’s blog post, but my Internet was down all day (apparently, there was a lightning strike and a fire at an AT&T facility that took out their primary power and their backup, so no Internet or phone for me for about twelve hours), so here it is today:

I had quite the adventure this weekend. The Writers in the Field event was taking place. It’s a sort of writing conference focusing on research, with various experts in things writers need to research giving presentations and available for questions. And because it really is in a field (more of a farm that’s been turned into an event venue, like a mini Renaissance Festival grounds), some of these things can really get hands-on. There’s archery, where you can learn about different kinds of bows and arrows and actually get to shoot some. There are various kinds of weapons demonstrations, from swords to guns. There are martial arts demonstrations. People from the forensics lab had set up a crime scene. Historical re-enactors set up camps. It’s all very cool and the kind of stuff you can’t get anywhere else.

However, since this is on a farm, weather can become an issue. We’ve had record-breaking amounts of rain this fall, so the ground has been soaked already. It rained a lot last week. Then the remnants of a tropical storm hit us on Friday and Saturday.

I almost didn’t go on Saturday because it was raining pretty hard, but on the news that morning they said it would clear out by afternoon, so I headed out. On my way there, my tire pressure warning light came on, so I pulled off the road, looked up the nearest Discount Tire on my phone, and got them to check my tires. It turns out it was just the change in weather affecting pressure, and by the time they were done airing up my tires, the rain had eased, so I decided to keep going. They were directing us to park at some harder surface lots nearby, and I was just in time for them to start that warning, so I got a good space. And then I was very glad I’d worn my waterproof hiking boots because it seems like all the runoff in the area ran through this site. Not only was there a great deal of mud, but there were a few inches of water on top of the mud. I went through a couple of the demonstrations and learned how a weaving loom works, but then decided I was done with wading and went to one of the indoor sessions. Midway through that session (on avoiding common mistakes of depicting medicine in fiction), people started pouring into the building. It turned out that there was a tornado warning, so they were bringing everyone inside. That turned into a networking session, where they pointed out the experts and you could go talk to them. I ended up hanging out with some friends who were there and chatting about writing. We got the all-clear and the rain stopped, so I went to a few more things and then decided to head home. The “waterproof” in my boots wasn’t up to a day of wading and my feet were cold and wet. Fortunately, I had a different pair of shoes for driving (since my boots were covered in mud) and I’d brought a pair of dry socks. It was nice to get home and heat up some beef stew and be warm and dry.

Sunday morning, I had to direct the kindergarten choir in the early service, and then I headed out again. It was dry — as in not raining, but there was still mud. They’d filled up the alternative parking, so they had me park on the grounds and said they could get me out if I got stuck. The ground wasn’t so bad without all the standing water, but the mud was epic. I got to go to all the sessions I wanted, though, which meant I got a couple of plot points for something I’m working on. I also got a couple of resource book recommendations, got to shoot some arrows (and learn which muscles I need to work on if I really want to do that), and learned some basics of lock picking and got to try it (let’s just say that a criminal career is not in the cards for me). Then it took three guys pushing to get my car out of the parking swamp and onto the drive. A Ford Focus is not your best bet for off-roading, it seems. I went through a drive-through car wash on the way home to clear off the worst of the mud, and I got home just as a new front was drastically dropping temperatures.

Now it may take a day or so for the mud on my boots to dry so I can chisel it off. I may invest in a pair of galoshes in case I ever do anything like this again. I’ve learned that walking through mud is excellent exercise. When a storm woke me during the night, I ended up lying awake for a while because all the muscles in my legs were suddenly aching, and I feel the archery in my back and shoulders. But it was all a great experience. There’s something about seeing something in real life that looking things up on the Internet or reading a book can’t replicate.