I’m not turning back this Tuesday. I am looking forward. I recently came to the reasoning that I deserve $50-$100 an hour for my writing. Given that I’ve written a pair of novels, a half dozen novellas of which 3 have been paid for and one published professionally and one published just on my own (I’m thinking about putting it up online again though through DrivethruRPG), I have the talent and history for the pay. I am going to be pushing to enroll in an MFA program this week, and that is designed to get me the credentials to continue teaching post my present tenure. The writing though, that’s the thing that is entirely in my power. It is not about how many cents per word I get. It is more about how fast I produce those words. So, if I am (and I am) writing a 12,000 word project and I believe I ought to be able to get $50 an hour, it means I need to get it done in 24 hours. That equates 500 words an hour. That is actually entirely doable–especially if I can seriously lock in and schedule it well. How long would a project like that actually take to do ‘in the zone’ of getting a solid 500 words an hour over the course of a week? 14 days at two hours a day and two days of not writing.
So why isn’t that happening?
Research, distractions, freaking life. I need to lock in. If I can do that—If I can shut out reality for two hours a day, I can be the writer I need to be.