Hello and welcome back! By now you know the drill. If you’ve been following along, we’re on part 10 of my 14-part autobiographical blog series. Thanks for reading this far! And if you’re new, you may want to start on part 1 here. Rather than follow a strictly chronological path though, I’ve tried to keep these posts somewhat themed (while still following a general timeline order of my life). Today is totally a chronological post though, and I’ll be focusing on my time after college. So, let’s dive into it!
The Life of A Professional Writer
While Evorath was my first venture into writing, it wasn’t actually my first professional writing job. See, when I was a senior in college I transitioned to almost all online courses. I started working full-time, and partly due to that, and partly due to the professors I selected, my senior thesis was delayed. Though I finished my coursework, that incompete thesis left me to graduate a semester later than planned. Which was fine, I was already working and at that point I had realized that a piece of paper didn’t change anything.
To be clear, I did still graduate (just a semester late). But shortly after I graduated, it was clear that my job at a law firm was coming to an end (it was around claims from the BP Oil spill, so it was always going to be a limited time gig). Well, rather than work for someone else again, I opted to write for a living. And for some time, it worked out! With lots of querying and some personal referrals, I built up a nice little customer base and made a decent living for a few years.
Between ghost writing blog posts for business (namely a lot of lawyers), subcontracting for an agency where I wrote website copy for a variety of businesses, and submitting articles to several online publications, I kept a steady paycheck. I was writing 5,000 or more words a day during that time, but unfortunately it came at a price; I was struggling to find time to write more in Evorath.
Finding True Love
Of course, if I’m being honest, that wasn’t the only thing that was taking up more time than anticipated. See, at the beginning of 2015, I went to a friend’s going away dinner. It was one of those social situations where, as an introvert, I had an outrageous amount of inner dialogue around whether I should even go. It was a big thing, with well over two dozen people saying they were going to attend. And including my friend who was leaving, I knew less than a handful of them. Because of this, I almost stayed home that night instead. But for whatever reason, I overcame my social anxiety and went.
Lo and behold, my future wife went through a similar internal struggle. But when we sat next to each other at that dinner, the course of both our lives was set to change. We went on our first date the next week, and when Valentine’s Day rolled around and I revealed my romantic scavenger hunt followed by a movie and a visit to the Florida State Fair, I’m pretty sure our future together was solidified.
We got engaged that Halloween and were married on April 8, 2016. After marrying my best friend and Evorath’s biggest fan, 2016 was also the year I properly released Evorath book 1, The Birth of Death. But the excitement of marriage and my book release had to compete with less exciting parts of life.
The Challenges of Life
Married life was great! In fact, it gets better all the time. But as with anything in life, there are always challenges that arise. And just after getting married, one of those challenges popped up for me! You see, I had an increasingly annoying client that was taking up an increasingly disproportionate amount of my time. I tried to manage, tried to push back and set expectations, but it was becoming clear that the relationship simply wasn’t working. Unfortunately, that client made up more than half of my income. I figured I could find more business to fill the gap after I told him we needed to part ways.
But alas, instead of finding new business, I had one of the agencies I worked for downsizing, and I lost the flow of business from them as well. It became abundantly clear that I wasn’t going to be able to make a sufficient living just writing. And with my wife now the breadwinner of the family, it wasn’t that we were in any immediate trouble, but our prospects didn’t look so great.
Next week, I’ll talk about how we handled this hurdle! For now, I hope you’re enjoying a good fantasy book. Assuming another hurricane doesn’t hit, I’ll see you next week for part 11 of the series! Peace, and God bless.
