NEW AUTHOR – First step: talk to your boss, free up some time!

Today has been a scary day for me. I’ve been anxious and tense since the moment I dropped my letter on my boss’s desk early this morning. Yes, I finally got the courage to do it!

A few months ago when I told my friend Brian that I had finished writing my first book and was planning on self-publishing he told me that I should check out the website of a very successful indie writer Joanna Penn. So, on my break I followed his advise and I checked out her website.

As a very diligent visitor I clicked on the menu that says “Start Here!” and I signed up for her free Author 2.0 Blueprint. Yes, I am like everybody else when I see something of interest that is free I can’t resist, I just have to download it! And, I am glad I did.

I’m still not finished reading it, the reason being that I got stuck for a while to page 6 because it says “I moved to four days a week at the day job…you need to clear a space for the new you”.

I always dreamed of freeing up some more space to write, I thought, “Maybe I should get a part-time job…Yes, but if I do, it will not be enough to pay for my bills! Humm…” But Joanna Penn enlightened me. Indeed, I had never thought of asking my boss to cut down on one day, working 4 days instead of 5!

It would still be difficult but I could manage to pay all of my bills if I’d worked 4 days instead of 5. An extra 8-10 hours to already the 1 to 2 hours I do daily in a coffee shop before going to work would double my productivity! It’s hard for me to find more than 1 to 2 hours per day to work on my writing and/or my projects because on top of 8/9 hours of day-job hours I also have 2 to 2 and a half hours of commute. Yep, the joy of the Los Angeles traffic. Therefore, when I arrive at home at night around 8.30 pm, my brain is half burned. I take a shower, eat, relax and it is already 11 or more.

Anyways, I know that many writers are in the same situation or even worse, so, I’m not trying to bring some self-pity here, but I’m still proud of myself for having written that letter and dropped it on my boss’s desk this morning.

I am almost 100% sure that my boss read it (I put it on the middle of his desk before he arrived this morning) but I don’t know if it’s a strategy of his or not but…he didn’t speak about it nor made any changes in his attitude showing me that he had read it. I never bite on my nails but tonight I feel like it!