So!

Hi.

How are you?

Good, I hope.

If you follow me, you know that in February of this year, I left my job to write full time. By the time you read this blog post, it will be almost three months to the day since I essentially stepped off a cliff into the great unknown. In fact, if you go back to my February post on this very blog, you can see my verbose and unintentionally giddy thoughts only days before I actually quit the exciting world of auto insurance claims and struck out on my own as a—capitalized, of course, so you know it’s true—Full Time Writer.

I told myself that at the three month mark, I was going to check in with myself, just to see how I was doing. Part of me honestly expected to find myself lazing about, living a rather slovenly life where I would get up at noon, write a couple of hundred words, and then play Fallout 4 for seventeen hours while eating Ben & Jerry’s and wearing torn underwear, socks with holes, and most likely scratching myself obscenely with the PlayStation control.

Alas!

That hasn’t been the case.

I told myself that if I was going to do this, if I was actually going to quit a decade-long job to write, then by god, I was going to actually write. No slacking, no sir, not for this Full Time Writer! I was going to churn out words, and they were going to be brilliant and I was going to maybe smoke a pipe and mutter to myself at how loquacious I was! I would get a fancy robe, and possibly flirt with alcoholism (as everyone knows all Full Time Writers who want to be Serious Full Time Writers have to have a vice), but the words, good man. The words.

So, what have I done since February 26^th, my first day as a full time writer?

Well, I’ve written.

Holy fuck have I written.

No, I don’t have torn underwear.

No, I haven’t succumbed to alcoholism.

No, I haven’t bought myself a fancy robe.

(Yes, I own socks with holes in them. Everyone does. If you say you don’t, you’re a liar and a fat mouth and probably shouldn’t be trusted.)

As of today’s date that I’m writing this, I have written, by my count, 223,730 words, give or take a couple thousand.

And that’s also including an almost two week vacation I took last month where I didn’t write anything at all.

I know, I know.

 

 

Let me tell you how I’m doing this:

Four days a week, Monday-Thursday, my alarm goes off at 5:30 AM.

(Don’t freak out. I am usually awake by this point anyway. I’m a bit of an insomniac, and usually wake up super early.)

I work out for an hour.

(Oooh, gurl, am I looking foine. Or something.)

I take a shower.

(Yes, in the nude.)

I drink weak tea and usually eat dry toast and walnuts.

(I’m really a seventy year old man.)

I sit in front of my computer by 7 am.

(And then spend the next half -hour or so wishing the election was over so I wouldn’t have to see the absolute scourge of humanity talking about things they read on “reputable” websites called TrumpIsJesus.com or BernieBros4Life.org—seriously, folks, is it just me or is 2016 going to be the year we all look back on down the road in embarrassment and think, Wow, were we a little fucked up back then?).

At half past seven, I pull up the word doc of my current manuscript and go through what I’d written previously, to make sure it didn’t read like I was high on meth.***

 

 

(***That doesn’t usually work when I’m writing Lightning books, because it always reads like I was high on meth. Which I’m not.)

Right at eight on the dot, I’ll start writing.

And keep on writing until about two in the afternoon, averaging 7-10K words a day. Some days more. Some days less, but that seems to be my sweet spot.

Once I finish that, I go for a three mile run while listening to true crime podcasts.

(Which, for some reason, have become my obsession, and now I am convinced that all my neighbors are murderers. Which, to be fair, they all pretty much suck, so there’s a high chance they could be.)

After that, I work out again for another hour.

(Legit. Like, okay, here’s the thing: I wasn’t taking very good care of myself last year. I was lazy, and eating shit food because it’s cheap and so accessible, and it was starting to show. I was tired all the time, stressed, didn’t give two fucks about how much fried chicken went in my mouth. It was terrible, and having a nine to five office job wasn’t helping, especially since it was literally sucking my soul from my body.

Now, I am one of those annoying people who would like to discuss my resting hear trate with you and also extol the wonders of my FitBit and this new app on my phone which tracks just how much I run during a week and then, if I meet my goal by the end of the week, gives me little stickers I can post on my virtual sticker board that says things like YOU ARE DOING SO GOOD, CHAMP and CONGRATS ON BEING SO GOSH DARN HEALTHY, YOU WINNER. Basically, I’ve stopped being a sloth and turned into a healthy douchebag. I don’t even know. I’ve lost eight pounds, I think I might have an ab or two (and if they aren’t abs, I might need to go to the doctor because they’re probably tumors,) and I just feel all around better about everything. I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been, and you know what? I’m proud of it.)

 

 

(Do you want to hear about my resting heart rate? Dude, it’s amazing.)

And then after that, I do whatever the fuck I want. Because I like to think I’ve earned it. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I play video games. Sometimes I get into my car and drive just to get lost and hopefully stumble across something that I haven’t seen before.

Fridays, I go back and edit everything I’ve written the week before.

Weekends are weekends.

Why am I telling you all of this?

Because, dudes. I’m happy.

This isn’t meant to be all, LOOK AT ME HOW WONDERFUL MY LIFE IS COMPARED TO YOURS, YOU OFFICE DRONES. That’s really not what I’m going for. I’m trying to hold myself accountable because I have to. It would be so easy for me to slack off and wake up on a Monday morning and think, Well, if I skip writing today, it won’t be so bad. I’ve already written a lot of stuff. And I have thought that. But I force myself up because if I want to have any hope of making this work, I have to treat it as my job. Because it is my job at this point.

And it really is thanks to you that I get to do this.

So!

I’ve made it three months.

I’ve written a shit ton of stuff.

I’ve released two books.

I have four more contracted to come out between now and the beginning of 2017.

I got this, okay?

I got this.

 

Tj

 

PS: Readers of this column will know in February, I wrote that I was going to grow a beard. I did. The less said about it the better. It’s gone now. My dreams of being a  hipster lumberjack died that day.

 

T