ready to start?

My wrist is still sore.

It occurs to me now, getting mentally prepared to begin ‘work’ on Monday when Ted starts his new job, that deciding to step out of one’s regular life and write full-time, when one has not previously been a writer, is not all that likely to be a successful gamble. On the other hand there are a few things going for it:

1) I was at a natural stopping point anyway
2) I will be writing nonfiction, on a topic I’ve been thinking about and working on aspects of for a decade
3) If I hate it I can always stop and go look for a job sooner than planned
4) On the practical/administrative side, I have money saved to carry me for a while, without even tapping into the “trailer-year” savings
5) Even if this never gets to be a book, I expect I’ll end up working on similar topics and being able to plagiarize from myself the rest of my life
6) Because I prefer flitting between tasks to working on only one at a time, I also have a kids’ science book to work on, so I can procrastinate on one thing with the other

On the downside, the original plan was to work on these together while traveling around on our planned-and-now-postponed year off; Ted’s determination and work ethic would have been largely helpful. Now he’ll be reduced to editing, some rewriting, and nagging in his free time, which are much less helpful. (I don’t respond all that well to nagging and even less well to “positive motivation”.)

The other downside is that right now when I’m trying to rest my wrist to calm a flare of what I think is tendonitis, is not actually the best time to plunge into intensive typing. This is especially true since we’re in temporary housing that has no good ergonomic place to work.

Best outcome: I get both books published, hopefully make a little money (I’m not optimistic enough to think it will be more than a little!) and thereby generate enough credibility to be a consultant on process improvement sort of stuff.

Worst outcome: I hate it or am terrible at it, and have to go look for a job right away, and it ends up taking a while to find one. (But Intel and all their suppliers are about to be doing lots of hiring around here, and so is Nike, so hopefully I can find a good one.)

Middle ground: I make good progress, but decide to go back to work either while finishing it or while shopping it around. May still be able to mention it in interviews in that case, and, as mentioned, borrow from it in my work.