Daydream Believer

I have the day off from work today*. I woke up at 9am, spent over an hour at the gym, showered, ran some errands, picked up lunch, started laundry while eating lunch and when I remove my laundry from the dryer, I am going to go to a coffee shop and do some writing. I also managed to do some social networking/promotion of my book between the gym and getting in the shower.   Since I normally have a full-time day job, I usually need to find the time to do all of the above with approximately 9 less hours in the day, but today I did it all without feeling the slightest bit rushed. 

Having the day off from my day job allows me to pretend to be a full-time writer.  I allow my mind to imagine how awesome it would be if I didn’t need the day job.  If I won the lottery, married rich, or sold enough books that I could write full time.  But I fear I might be dreaming too big, so let’s take a step backwards. 

Last month, I took half a day off from work on February 14th.  It had nothing to do with wanting to spend the morning in bed with my boyfriend on Valentine’s Day (especially since we had broken up a week earlier).  No, I took half a day off from work because I was engaged in a cross-promotion of A State of Jane with eight other authors and I knew that I wanted to tweet it, share it, blog it and email anyone and everyone I knew who might be interested in buying my book and those of my comrades at a fraction of the cost.  I knew if I went to work that morning, I would be too busy being a trademark paralegal to be a writer.  I can’t afford to let my day job suffer as a result of my writing but I also did not want to waste an opportunity to get my book in the hands of people who would rather test the waters of my writing for 99 cents than $2.99 by not promoting the sale to the greatest extent possible.  So, I compromised and took the morning off from work.  It was fantastic.  I woke up early and went to the gym, ran some errands, spent a few hours on various social media sites promoting the sale and got into work at 2pm.  Only working in the afternoon allowed my mind to imagine how awesome it would be if I didn’t need a full-time day job. If I won the lottery, married rich or sold enough books that I could afford to work a day job only part time.

As of now, I still need my full-time day job and I thank goodness it needs me as well.  That being said, I am selling more books than I ever did before.  The publication of my 2nd book is definitely driving the sales of my first one and I hope to publish a third one later this year (fingers crossed).  So, while I will continue to feel blessed that I have a day job that pays my rent, affords me the ability to have an active social life and take trips when I want, and comes with medical insurance and a 401k plan, I will also continue to hold onto hope that someday…someday, I will sell enough books so I can be a full-time writer and don’t have to “imagine” what it would be like. 

*This post was actually written last week.

7 Comments

  1. Clippings In The Shed... on March 25, 2013 at 7:44 pm

    Amen to that, sister!

  2. Brea Brown on March 25, 2013 at 7:45 pm

    Let’s dream big together! I already ruled out the “marry rich” option, but the other two could totally happen still. Right? Right?!

  3. Tracie Banister (@traciebanister) on March 25, 2013 at 9:21 pm

    Hee! I like being referred to as a “comrade.” I honestly don’t know how you do all that you do every day, Meredith. You are an inspiration! I hope that you are able to retire from paralegaling (Is that a word?) one day so that you can write full-time. Imagine how many books you’d release a year then! 🙂

  4. StephTheBookworm on March 26, 2013 at 4:33 pm

    Great post. I hope your dream comes true. I wish I could make money reading books all day instead of working lol. 🙂

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