I am loving being retired from my paralegal career. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE.

But after about six weeks, I’m beginning to worry about my other job. The one I didn’t retire from – my career as a writer.

For years I cranked out two novels a year and held down a full-time job. One year I even produced three novels. That year about killed me. Even the other years with two books were hard on me. I was always on a computer, either at home or at work. I seldom got out with friends, unless I made a pointed effort. Long weekends were often spent holed up in my apartment alone, without ever leaving until I had to go to work. Same with holidays. I paid a price for that dedication to both my job and my writing career – weight gain, high blood pressure, depression, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret all the sacrifices I made to establish myself as a prolific novelist. I never made much money. Few fiction writers do. But I have a loyal readership and a body of work that makes me proud.

Now that I don’t have a job, I should be writing all the time, but I’m not. I wrote more when I was working and under contract. I haven’t released a new novel in over a year. Then again, much of 2017 and all of 2018 was spent preparing for retirement. I had to get my RV. Outfit it. Give up my apartment and move into the RV. I have been writing during this time, but not with the same dedication and focus. Early 2019 was spent getting out on the road, dealing with RV issues, and setting up my new residence in Texas. I did put out a new short story in 2018 – Sh*t I’d Kill For – which was very well received.

Now here I am in mid-February 2019 and I’m ready to get busy and back on writing fiction with a heat-seeking focus. This week I got off the road and settled into a lovely campground at Gulf Island National Seashore. I know a lot of people who have stayed here and loved it. I plan on really pounding out the finish to a non-mystery novel I’ve been working on for several years. It’s almost done. But it won’t get done if I don’t make it a priority. Then I need to move on to the next Granny Apples novel and the new Odelia Grey novel. After that the third Madison Rose book. I need to put deadlines on myself. So my deadline to finish Finding Zelda is the end of February. I need to treat my own deadlines as I did when I was under contract to publishers. You can fudge a bit, but not a lot.

But all work and no play makes Sue Ann cranky. Everyday I need to exercise, do some household chores, and I also need to see the lovely places I’m visiting. It’s a balance, just like balancing the day job with the writing all those years, but not as daunting.

Going forward, every day I will be writing a few hours on my fiction. And I will be blogging on Babble ‘n Blog at least twice a month. I will also continue writing my posts on The Novel RV Journal. These are done daily and are the raw material for a travel book. You can read those at https://www.patreon.com/Sueannjaffarian.

Writing has never been a hobby for me. I have always treated it as a job, a career with deadlines. I need to get back to work!

I’m self-employed and my boss can be a real bitch!