I have come across a link to a forum that discusses quitting your full-time job to be a full-time writer. After reading post after post from authors (independent and self-published), I literally started to cry. I don’t have the guts to quit school to be a full-time writer. I’ve put too much time and borrowed money into it, and it still does mean a lot for me to get this degree. Plus, I can hear people saying “Are you insane? You can’t do that!!!”
I don’t think I’ll have the guts to do that even after I graduate and get this stupid piece of paper that’s been consuming my life for the past five years. Maybe it’s because I don’t really believe that my writing is any good. Maybe it’s because I can hear my mother’s voice in my head telling me to always have something to fall back on, and that a degree is all that matters in life because it opens doors for you left and right (which I call bullshit anyway). I read about these authors living on their savings (how much money do you have to make to be able to live on savings for three or four years while you wait for your book to turn into profit? If it ever does, because there’s no guarantee, of course) and I see that’s never gonna happen for me. I’m unemployed right now, have just found out that I wasn’t selected for the job/internship at Rusk I was hoping for, and I’m freaking out because I don’t know what’s gonna happen in the next couple of months without an income AND without an internship.
Believe me, I would love nothing more than to become a recluse and just write and read all day long, with no concerns for anything else. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do that. Is it because I don’t really have the passion for it that I thought I did? Am I thinking this way because I’m disappointed about Rusk? Or because I’ve been trying to finish a story now for a week and it’s just not working? I just don’t know. As much as I’d like to believe that I’m the kind of person who follows her dreams, and faces everything head on, my thoughts are telling me otherwise right now. My thoughts are telling me there are bills to pay, mouths to feed, and other people to be taken into account. How can these people just quit everything to write full-time? Where and how do they find all this support they talk about? I feel guilty for even thinking it. I feel like it would just be an excuse for me to give up the challenges of my own life.
And I just made the mistake of checking my bank account. Crap.