THE GOLDEN AGE (~2009-2019)
After college and entering the workforce, things definitely changed for a bit, but not as much as I expected at first. My first desk job— working the drive thru at a bank— actually gave me bits and pieces of time to crank out words. If things were slow and my drawer was in good shape, there was nothing really to do. It was in this time period that I first discovered NaNoWriMo and put out my first novel. (The REALLY bad one).
Honestly, I can safely say that 2009-2019 was, so far, my golden age of writing. I was cranking out thousands of words most days. I definitely hit my first million words somewhere in there… my guess would be around 2013, if not earlier, honestly. I’ve never calculated and couldn’t if I wanted to. But I’d say definitely by then, I was well and truly past a million words.
It was my job after I left the bank that really blossomed things, and that happened in the middle of 2011. I started working at a call center, and it had… amenities. A cafeteria, a very nice on-site employee gym with showers, a “relaxation room” with a couple couches and a white noise machine. It was honestly kinda like being on campus again. I practically lived there for seven years. I also got into the best shape of my life… briefly… until work stress stole it from me.
But I digress. By this time, I had a laptop and a lot of habits. I’d get up at, no kidding, 4:15 in the morning, drive the 50ish minutes to the call center to get a good parking spot and be there when the gym opened at 5:30. I’d get in at least an hour workout, get a shower, and have breakfast, all usually before 7 or 7:15. My work shift usually was 8-5 or 9-6, so the rest of that time was my writing time.
Even better was when I got a promotion that took me to a different department, OFF the phones. It was still busying work, but this gave me the freedom to listen to music while I processed things, and my playlists got old pretty quick (this was in the days of iPods). So I started seeking other audio input. I found podcasts, podiobooks, and eventually audiobooks. Many podcasts I listened to were fiction based or about writing, and I eventually started one of my own that ran from 2014-2020, The Melting Potcast (RIP).
It was also somewhere in here that I had multiple 10,000+ word days. I almost had a 20,000-word day, but… that was a rough day.
And the words were not that great. It was in here where… well, I’ve talked about NaNoWriMo before and what it taught me. I switched to quality over quantity in here.
In 2016, I got ANOTHER promotion to another offline department, and this was one that was even less work-intense. It was a monitoring hub for a bunch of nationwide call center departments, and unless there was a crisis going on, there was actually little to do. A lot of my coworkers spent their time reading, studying for certifications, all kinds of stuff.
I generally did this: first couple hours, writing. I usually had some sort of goal: a chapter or two, a plot point, editing, something like that. Once I got through it… I usually started chainmailing, because it was in 2015 that that craft finally came barreling into my life. I was still cranking out a good thousand words on a good day. It was also during this time that most of my published works came out: Starsigns, Criminal From Birth, and The Deadly Studies being the most notable.
In early 2018, I got the bad news: the call center was closing. It was going to be relocate, take a BIG demotion and go back on the phones in a different department (but at a call center closer to home), or take severance.
I took severance. I lost my gym, my power naps, and all the easy writing time I’d been enjoying for the last few years. It was… very different, I’ll say.
After college and entering the workforce, things definitely changed for a bit, but not as much as I expected at first. My first desk job— working the drive thru at a bank— actually gave me bits and pieces of time to crank out words. If things were slow and my drawer was in good shape, there was nothing really to do. It was in this time period that I first discovered NaNoWriMo and put out my first novel. (The REALLY bad one).
Honestly, I can safely say that 2009-2019 was, so far, my golden age of writing. I was cranking out thousands of words most days. I definitely hit my first million words somewhere in there… my guess would be around 2013, if not earlier, honestly. I’ve never calculated and couldn’t if I wanted to. But I’d say definitely by then, I was well and truly past a million words.
It was my job after I left the bank that really blossomed things, and that happened in the middle of 2011. I started working at a call center, and it had… amenities. A cafeteria, a very nice on-site employee gym with showers, a “relaxation room” with a couple couches and a white noise machine. It was honestly kinda like being on campus again. I practically lived there for seven years. I also got into the best shape of my life… briefly… until work stress stole it from me.
But I digress. By this time, I had a laptop and a lot of habits. I’d get up at, no kidding, 4:15 in the morning, drive the 50ish minutes to the call center to get a good parking spot and be there when the gym opened at 5:30. I’d get in at least an hour workout, get a shower, and have breakfast, all usually before 7 or 7:15. My work shift usually was 8-5 or 9-6, so the rest of that time was my writing time.
Even better was when I got a promotion that took me to a different department, OFF the phones. It was still busying work, but this gave me the freedom to listen to music while I processed things, and my playlists got old pretty quick (this was in the days of iPods). So I started seeking other audio input. I found podcasts, podiobooks, and eventually audiobooks. Many podcasts I listened to were fiction based or about writing, and I eventually started one of my own that ran from 2014-2020, The Melting Potcast (RIP).
It was also somewhere in here that I had multiple 10,000+ word days. I almost had a 20,000-word day, but… that was a rough day.
And the words were not that great. It was in here where… well, I’ve talked about NaNoWriMo before and what it taught me. I switched to quality over quantity in here.
In 2016, I got ANOTHER promotion to another offline department, and this was one that was even less work-intense. It was a monitoring hub for a bunch of nationwide call center departments, and unless there was a crisis going on, there was actually little to do. A lot of my coworkers spent their time reading, studying for certifications, all kinds of stuff.
I generally did this: first couple hours, writing. I usually had some sort of goal: a chapter or two, a plot point, editing, something like that. Once I got through it… I usually started chainmailing, because it was in 2015 that that craft finally came barreling into my life. I was still cranking out a good thousand words on a good day. It was also during this time that most of my published works came out: Starsigns, Criminal From Birth, and The Deadly Studies being the most notable.
In early 2018, I got the bad news: the call center was closing. It was going to be relocate, take a BIG demotion and go back on the phones in a different department (but at a call center closer to home), or take severance.
I took severance. I lost my gym, my power naps, and all the easy writing time I’d been enjoying for the last few years. It was… very different, I’ll say.
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