Come See The Girl On The Flying Trapeze

Today I took a big, scary leap of faith. It was the last day at a job I love, which I decided to leave in order to go back to writing full-time. I’ve been a full-time writer before, and I know how hard it can be to make money at it, and yet, here I go again. I’m scared. But I’m really happy.

I did not come to this decision lightly, mostly because, as I said, I loved my job as a research associate at a non-profit. However, I’m in my last semester of an MFA program at the University of Southern Maine, and my fiction has grown into something that I thought was OK into something I am proud of and think is pretty great. I want to keep doing it, and do more. I also have two children. Amazing children. Over the past two years people have asked me a lot, how do you do it? I wrote a blog post about it. But, if I want to devote the amount of time to writing as I need to in order to make a good solid go of it, something had to give. I talked to my incredibly supportive husband and he encouraged me to go for it. It’s going to be a little tight financially, but we will be OK.

While talking to one of my colleagues about it, she had a great analogy for times like this in our lives – it’s like being a trapeze artist. You are standing at the top of the pole and the bar is swinging your way. You can either make a jump for it and hope you catch the bar, or you can wait and hope it comes back your way again. It might not. I just turned 40. I fear that if I don’t jump now, I never will. So, here it goes. I’m making a jump for it.

Expect big things from me.