Part 1 – How I Quit My Day Job: The Setup
Or, How I started 2020 with a stalled career, no agent, and no hope and ended it with 5 books under contract.
I’m not gonna lie—I’m writing this series of posts out of a mixture of avoidance and a serious need to get words flowing from my fingers, even if they aren’t the one’s I should be writing. I’m stuck at the transition point once again. I’ve finished one project and made several attempts to start the next one, but I’m like the kid running up to the edge of the ocean, then deciding they’re too scared. I can’t seem to make myself dive in, and damn if this isn’t a familiar scenario by now.
And if I need to ease myself into making words happen, I may as well make my avoidance words useful to someone, right? So, I want to share my experiences at the end of the year I quit my day job to write and parent full time***, including lots of financial transparency and tips.
But first, to show you how I dared to think it was even possible, I have to set the stage by talking about The Missing Year, 2020.
A note before we begin
I think it’s important to say right up front that there is nothing more or less virtuous about either writing without a day job or a kid having a stay at home parent. Most authors have day jobs. Many are happy having those jobs and the associated stability. We tend to romanticize the idea of becoming a full time author, but not everyone wants that. It’s not a good fit for every writer. It’s not a universal goal. Likewise, many parents enjoy working outside the home and have no desire to stay home with their kids. They provide wonderful, loving homes for their kids who are no less happy or well-developed for being in daycare.
An author with a day job is no better or worse than an author without one.
A parent who works outside the home is no better or worse than a parent who stays home to raise kids.
There are only choices that are right and feasible for your family and choices that aren’t.
So, with that disclaimer out of the way: let’s set things up with a 2020 recap.
A downward spiral
On January 1, 2020, I thought my career was over. My second book, Spellhacker, was about to come out with no support, having been largely abandoned. My first agent and I had just parted ways, and her attempts to hook me up with someone else at the agency had just failed. She hadn’t liked any of the proposal packages I’d written and sent her from 2016-2019 (and there were a lot of them) enough to put them on submission. I wasn’t landing the IP opportunities she was bringing me.
Things were looking bleak. I was pregnant with my first baby, though, and despite being ill to the point of delirium and needing IV fluids, I was thrilled. Maybe it was for the best. I could just focus on my baby and my day job as a librarian, which had taken a turn for the very challenging. I’d achieved my dream of publishing a book. Did I really need it to be a career? I did end up signing with a new agent, but my expectations were low.
Then covid happened. Then my day job got worse. My pregnancy-related illness didn’t let up. Then my job got even worse. Then covid went on, and on, and on, until it became clear I’d be delivering a baby with a testing swab up my nose, a mask over my face, and no visitors allowed. My blood pressure skyrocketed, my day job nearly gave me a breakdown, and I had to be induced three weeks early. I delivered a healthy baby, thank the stars, and went home to start my three months of leave from the library. I barely thought about writing at all.
The first new book deal
Somewhere in that hazy fog of newborn exhaustion and postpartum anxiety, my agent called. The One True Me & You had sold to Wednesday Books. I was happy, but also so tired that I’m pretty sure I just said “Oh, cool. Thanks.”
It was worthy of a much stronger reaction, though: my career was not over. There would be at least one more book. And this was a book I loved, one of the many I’d written for my previous agent during our time together, so I was overjoyed that it wouldn’t die in the drawer. I was waking up every two hours to feed an infant, though, so I hope I can be forgiven for not shrieking with happiness at the time. I fully expected to end the year on that little glimmer of hope. One more book in the world. Pretty cool.
Before I had the baby, I’d also been offered the chance to audition for a middle grade IP project. I honestly hate these kinds of auditions—they involve doing a ton of work for a job you might not even get. I’d never successfully landed one before, and this one involved a four-chapter sample from four different POVs. A lot to ask. But the project was really cool and so up my alley, so I said I’d do it. Then the baby came early, so I said never mind. Then they gave me an extension because they really wanted me to audition, so I felt obligated. I somehow got it done by writing on my phone at 3am while nursing the baby. I sent it off in August, expecting nothing, and promptly forgot about it.
Back to work …and four more books? Really?
I returned to my day job in October with many tears and much dread. I wasn’t ready to leave the baby. I was exhausted in every way and still recovering physically and mentally. I cried nearly every day because work was wearing me down, I missed my baby, and I hated pumping at work so much UGH. The daycare sent pictures of the baby growing and changing and doing fun things and I loved and hated every single one. She left for daycare at 6:30am, and I arrived home at 5:05pm, just in time to nurse her and put her down for bed. I saw her for maybe an hour each work day. So many new parents look forward to returning to work, or push through the initial difficulty and eventually find their equilibrium again. I just… never got there. The elephant on my chest never left.
Then, in late October, I got a call from my agent. The middle grade IP audition had gone better than either of us expected. It wasn’t just one book, it was a trilogy. The pay was nothing fantastic—it’s IP, after all—but it would be steady drips of money over the next few years.
Three more books. Maybe my career could go on for a little longer after all.
Then in November, Titan Books reached out. They wanted me to write a super top secret project: a tie-in novel for a Guardians of the Galaxy video game coming out in 2021. Again, not much money, but no audition either. The timeline would be super fast and deadlines would conflict, but it was the Guardians, my favorite Marvel team after the Young Avengers, and the group that inspired The Disasters. I knew it would make 2021 completely hectic, juggling all that writing, a baby, and a day job, but it was the Guardians. It was Marvel. It was a chance to see behind the curtain of a video game in development.
Maybe I should have said no… but I couldn’t.
I started 2020 with zero books under contract. Now… five? Really? The reversal had me reeling.
And oh so quietly, in the back of my mind, I began dreaming of quitting my day job for real as January 2021 dawned.
Maybe it didn’t have to be a dream anymore. Maybe we could make it work.
It was time to hardcore crunch some numbers, and I’ll be showing you those numbers in the next post. See you there.
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(*** This will be covered in the next post, but I still don’t consider myself a full-time author. I’m actually a full-time stay at home parent who covers a portion of the bills by writing during nap times and one 8-hour day per week. I am a full-time author only in the sense that I was able to leave my day job to be a stay-at-home parent because of writing. This is a REALLY important distinction. You cannot write while watching a one year old and anyone who says you can is selling something.)
Go to Part 2: Crunching Numbers and Taking Leaps: The Money Post
