[kennyc]

I'm sitting here evaluating my results/goals and planning/considering my future -- a very dangerous thing to do in many ways.

as some of you know I left my CCP (Corporate Computer Programmer) job somewhat abruptly at the beginning of March. It was my choice -- just couldn't handle the BS any more. I rearranged my finances a bit to reduce both my short and long term expenses in that I got completely debt free (including paying off my mortgage) and have been doing my best to live frugally. For the most part all that is working. The 'surprise' came with having to find health care insurance and the associated costs -- just totally sucks! But I'm under a high-risk plan for now at some $200/month -- but it doesn't cover much of anything and has a high deductible. I've been living on my savings since then. Anyway....the plan was to restart my writing career that was put on hold almost 20 years ago with only minimal publications since. It's been a hard go of it, but do feel like I've accomplished some good.

I revised and got a collection of my poetry together that had been shopped around in various forms and published it myself on Amazon. I've had a few sales of it but nothing to even really matter. And that's the end result actually of the past ten months of effort -- little to no income from it. ....

but....

- I got that collection No Longer Dressed in Black self published,

- completed a short story that is part of what is a series of stories which will be collected together and published (I'd hoped to have that completed by now but it hasn't happened)

- I completed several creative non-fiction essays which also are ultimately intended for a collection

- as well as several personal memoir essays that are intended for a separate collection.

- I've sketched at least two novel ideas and started them but no further progress -- I seem much more drawn to the shorter works despite the fact that income may be more possible with novel-length work.

- had a couple of poems published - one even paid a few bucks.

- I got completely distracted for a couple of months and focused exclusively on my pencil drawing and completed 10 or so drawings. I've decided to actually offer for sale my original drawings (which I've never done before) and had updated and listed all my work at my Fine Art America site. No sales in the art world effort either at this point. In addition I put together a book of my drawings with stories about each one offered for free download in hopes of generating interest in my art originals and prints and interestingly enough I've sold more of these on Amazon (even though it is free on my website) than my other works (poetry, stories, essays). Go figgure.

in addition, I've done and continue to do a hell of a lot of reading/studying/analyzing/learning in both fiction and non-fiction which will continue.

so I do feel I've accomplished a lot, but I did not get the novel completed that I thought I would, nor did I get a collection of short stories completed as I'd hoped.

I'm feeling that part of my fall-down is simply not cranking the words out. I do fine if I'm inspired on a particular project but am far from producing a regular daily word-count.

So at this point I'm considering what direction to go, whether to continue to push ahead (with possible changes in effort/detail) or to possibly turn to other means of generating income (back to CCP or other full-time work) to put food in the dog bowl or to continue to push forward with the the writing and to the bitter end. I'm not completely tapped out yet money-wise, but there are a number of unknowns at this point - in particular what my tax situation is going to look like once I begin to figure out what the result is for 2012 and all the change that took place.

Well, TMI eh? Anyone have comments or want to post your results/plans this last week of 2012?