The Writing Life- May 19 plus a pretty exciting announcement.

So, I had an aha moment this past week.  I realized that I’m doing a lot of good things to help set myself up as a full time writer.  I have a few e-books in the works. I’m very nearly done with my first novel, Broken Patterns.  I was published twice last year.  I’ve got this awesome site right here that helps me meet and interact with so many other like minded people.

But I didn’t have any real, tangible step by step goals to quitting my day job, and becoming a full fledged full time writer.  My plan, so far, has been ‘write, edit, submit, repeat.’

That’s a great basis, but I need something more.  I realized that I couldn’t visualize what it would take for me to be comfortable leaving the day job and writing full time.  How would I ever know if I was making enough to insure we weren’t going to starve to death?  Writing isn’t a guaranteed paycheck, what if something happened, and I lost all of our income?

The answer came back to Dave Ramsey.  Have you heard of him?  I love the guy.  He’s got the best, most down to earth and easy to follow money advise of anyone, ever.  Have you heard of his debt snowball plan?  It’s awesome!

I decided that the first step down the path of being a full time writer was planning to fail.  I needed to achieve the first three parts of Dave Ramsey’s baby steps.

1. Save $1,000 in an emergency fund.
2. Pay down debt with the debt snowball method.
3. Put 3-6 months worth of bills and expenses in saving.

That’s step one.  I can’t even think about quitting my job until I’ve done those three things.  Well, two things, actually.  Fortunately I’ve managed to live debt free.  My savings, however, is nothing.  Not a dime.

So, while I’m saving my pennies, here are some other things I’m doing to prepare for full time writer-hood.

• I’m finishing Broken Patterns.
• I’m setting specific work hours every week, and sticking to them the same way I stick to my day job hours.
• I’m considering other revenue streams, like ads on this blog, super sweet writing tools I can create, and investing.

So I was thinking, maybe this might be something that we could do together.  I’m starting a newsletter for writers who want to start writing full time, but don’t know how feasible it’s going to be.  If you want to come along, and share your story as you go, please sign up for the newsletter below.

• Even more paying freelance markets than I post on Paper Beats World.
• Some money saving tips, because frugality is a step on the path to full time writer-hood.
• Some links to posts from other sites that helped me out on the path.
• And, once I get to the point where I’m selling my e-books and writing tools, you’ll get heads up, pre-ordering, freebees and discounts.

It’s been really exciting for me to have a clear, attainable goal.  I hope that it is for you, too.

Things That Rocked This Week-

• I finished up a new piece to send to Every Day Fiction.  Hoping that ends well.
• Wrote the rough draft for my Second Hand Smoke piece.  It was really hard to write, I don’t mind telling you.  But I feel better having written it.
• Also wrote a clever piece for the Stingy Jack Anthology I told you about last Friday.  I think it’s a solid piece.

Things That I’m Looking Forward to This Week-

• The Tipsy Writer twitter chat is tonight, and every Tuesday night at 8:30.  Just follow The Tipsy Writer on twitter, and join us.  Hope to see you there.
• I got a ton of books off Amazon by some super fantastic indie authors.  I’m going to read them, and tell you all about the good ones in coming Check This Out posts.  There are so many great indie books out there, and so many that make me want to slap the authors for making the rest of us look bad.  I want to tell you more about the good ones.

So, what did you do this week?  What are you pumped about?