Dan

I’m staying up late on a weeknight, on purpose.

Trying to figure out how to juggle an increasingly-serious relationship, a full-time job, and the writing and software development I want to do has been giving me fits lately. I don’t want to give any of it up, either, so I’m turning to one of my idols for the grim meathook realities of the situation.

Despite that last line, no, I’m not talking about Hunter Thompson, though he was pretty fabulous.

The people I idolize these days are people who do their own thing - who make a living creating something they care about. Independent software developers, webcomic creators, indie musicians selling MP3s on the web. The man I’m talking about tonight is Dave Kellett. Dave is one of the authors of How To Make Webcomics, and he gets to draw a comic strip every day for his bread and butter. As described on an episode of the HtMW authors’ podcast (available here, at webcomics.com), Dave did his strip for eight years while rocking a full-time day job at Mattel before the strip reached the point - due to popularity and its creator’s business acumen - that it could support him by itself.

So how did Dave, married, with a day job and a commute that was no doubt several times longer than mine (he lives in Los Angeles), produce a strip a day for eight years? Determination, and less sleep than is perhaps recommended. He found the most-productive time to put into his art came after friends and family went to bed, and tackled the strip late at night before going to bed and getting up bright and early the next morning to go to work.

I’m starting to think that, if I want to get as much done as I want to, I’m going to have to embrace my natural tendency to stay up late and turn it to doing something productive.

So tonight I started writing at ten or so, and finished a short story I’d been neglecting for a few weeks. Then, I’ll admit, I dawdled by adding all my computer games to Delicious Library, before settling in and writing this post. What can I say? I wanted to wait until midnight to proclaim my new commitment.

So, work life, personal life, and now this life. Being a wordsmith for a living isn’t going to happen without sacrifice. It’s not surprising to me that sleep is the first thing I’d drag trembling onto the altar.

It’s a new year. Is this the year I get my life together? I hate phrasing questions like that, because I probably said yes to it last year. If I didn’t get my life together by the end of that year, so… what? Do I quit? No, I just continue trying.

A year boundary seems like a good time to try and change, and leading up to 2009 I’ve been going over the elements of my life with a fine-toothed comb to see what can be jettisoned to bring the important things into focus. I bought a couple video games a few months ago and I was excited about them both: Fallout 3, for me, and LittleBigPlanet for me to play with my lady. I haven’t touched either in weeks and weeks - just haven’t found the time - and I can’t honestly say it upsets me. Video games are such a timesink, and what do they allow me to produce? Nothing more than a movie or book. Video games are a narrative for me to consume, and some of them are as good as my favorite movies and books, but if they take longer to play than it takes me to read The Stand, I have to think carefully about if it’s worth it.

The short of it is, I can throw on a good movie and be guaranteed a complete experience in about two hours. A given two-hour session of a video game can’t make the same promise, even if, over time, the game’s complete narrative is compelling and worthwhile. These aren’t the only two games I’ve ever bought and barely (or never) played. So video games will continue to recede into the background for me.

Reading books and watching movies, those I’m keeping - they just have to fit into my free time around the creative projects I want to do. And what about (tabletop) gaming with friends? That’s become a key social activity for me, and I’m hesitant to lose it. I also argue that, specifically in the case where I run a D&D scenario, I’m engaged in a creative enterprise, one I’d like to pursue alongside other writing. It’s just another avenue for storytelling, albeit perhaps less marketable than a webcomic or graphic novel.

I think the important question when considering each activity is the time it takes, because I’m long on imagination, working on motivation, but severely constrained on time. Welcome to modern, urban life.

The near-term goal, as it’s been for the last X New Year’s Days, is to get to a place where I’m writing all the time, at least a morsel of writing (500-1000 words, enough to take a step towards a complete work) every day. My lady and I discussed locking ourselves inside for the rest of the winter and making each other write at the expense of most other forms of recreation and, to the extent we can do that without being complete hermits, I approve of the idea. It’s time for some tough love, I say to my idealistic self, because I’m tired of my successful career as a person who talks about wanting to write a lot. I haven’t been getting anywhere near where I want to be by just hoping I’ll straighten out my priorities, and I’m grateful for her added motivation.

We’ll just have to be careful not to drive each other completely and utterly mad in the course of this dark experiment.

There’s more to be said about creating the life I want to lead. This post was about what I spend my time doing. The next big thing is what I spend my money having.