{"id":17,"date":"2007-06-18T07:05:17","date_gmt":"2007-06-18T14:05:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/?p=17"},"modified":"2026-04-23T08:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T13:22:15","slug":"moving-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/?p=17","title":{"rendered":"Moving on…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A 37 year old guy who hasn’t made one red cent on his writing decides to quit his full-time, well paying job, and work on his writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The punch line? Not really sure yet. See, it isn’t so much a joke, a story, or even an anecdote. At least not yet. It’s what I’m doing. Last week I put in my notice at my job. I’m taking a few months off to write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next week I take my final class for my bachelor’s degree. After 16 years of work, off and on, I am finally finishing. I go back and forth between being embarrassed about how long it has taken, and just being relieved and feeling like it’s a major accomplishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The past several years I’ve been focusing on creative writing and literature classes. Not the most practical courses for someone who works in the computer field, but it’s something I wanted to do. Much like taking this time off. It doesn’t make sense, but this is one of the few times in my life where I’ve decided I want to do something for myself and am actually following through with it. My life has been a series of things I have to do, need to do, and just happened to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one should get the idea that I think I can make a living as a writer just yet. But I do want to give the impression that my writing has improved in the past year or two and that what I’m doing now is pretty good. And if I’ve just spent all this time and money (holy crap, the money!) on this degree, I owe it to myself to spend a few months doing the writing thing. While I’m writing, though, the resume’s will be going out as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two more weeks at work and then it’s all about writing. Models, household stuff, photography, but mostly about writing. I’m going to go back to the Stephen King plan of 2,000 words a day 5 days a week (Stephen actually recommends 2k words EVERY day, but I think everyone realizes he’s a machine). I’ve got a couple of short stories to finish cleaning up, and two agents are waiting for me to send them the first fifty pages of my novel “Copper and Kerosene”. After that housekeeping is done — and I’m actually going to try to get a lot of that done within the next few weeks — then I’m starting my second novel. Hell, I figure that the only thing an agent would like better than a finished novel is two of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Money is going to be tighter, and Kristen will probably freak out a few times (but she’s happy for me and said it’s a great idea; further proof that I picked a good woman, or maybe a good woman picked me) but that’s nothing that hasn’t happened before. I get to spend some time focusing on what I want to do, what I think is important for me, and I plan on enjoying it for however long it lasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, a 37 year old guy who hasn’t made one red cent on his writing decides to quit his full-time, well paying job, and work on his writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The punch line? Not really sure yet. I’m working on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one: A 37 year old guy who hasn’t made one red cent on his writing decides to quit his full-time, well paying job, and work on his writing. The punch line? Not really sure yet. See, it isn’t so much a joke, a story, or even an anecdote. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pha1lg-h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10888,"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/10888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devinjpoore.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}