Freelancing While Waiting To Be Discovered

The odds of being able to support myself as a writer are against me. I suppose it would be different if I my overhead didn’t include healthcare insurance, a mortgage and all the bills that go with creating a home for my daughters and me. But, even though my novel, Without Grace, won four awards, no major publishing house is knocking on my door offering me an advance for my next novel, which means I need to find ways to keep myself afloat until my big break. It was October 2005, on the very day I got my first mind-blowing review, comparing my novel to To Kill a Mockingbird, that I lost my job with a company I’d been with for over eleven years.

The company downsized the marketing department and several of us had our positions eliminated. My day began with thankful tears for the great review, but those tears turned to fear for the sudden life change. However, I looked at it as a moment of opportunity, a moment to believe in my career as a writer. Even though I’d recently purchased my first home after my divorce, I decided to see if I could make it as a fulltime freelance writer and publishing consultant. Two hours after I was unemployed, I secured a freelance gig with a publicity firm, and thought, hey, this’ll be a cinch!

But it wasn’t and isn’t a cinch and I often have meltdowns. I toy with the idea of getting back into the workforce fulltime while wondering if I do so, will I be giving up on my ambition. My intention for freelancing was to provide me time to work on my third novel. However, by day’s end, after investing hours promoting other writers’ careers, I’m too exhausted to give the characters I’m creating time, so they remain in Limbo.

The question is, when I do get back to the fictional world, will they be there waiting for me, or will they have moved on?