How to support yourself as a writer

I’m sitting with the rough draft of my non-fiction book that I’m meant to have finished yesterday, ready to start all over again.

Five weeks ago I started a course called The 30 Day Book Writing Challenge with Joshua Sprague and on the first day, as instructed, set a date and consequence for my getting (or not getting) my book finished. The date was set for yesterday, December 10, and the consequence to motivate me was that I would shave my head.

Last Friday was the email for Day 25 since the emails are only sent on weekdays .. so I figured, well, I’ll make it December 17 instead, and proceeded to fritter away DAYS .. clearly procrastinating BIG TIME.

Now it’s Monday .. Day 26 .. and I’ve picked up and re-started the book ‘Writing Without a Parachute — The Art of Freefall’ by Barbara Turner-Vesselago.

I’ve read the introduction, of how she came to the process of ‘freefall writing’ and it has inspired me to do what I was planning to do anyway — to start again, this time with an idea of what I’m trying to say and where I want to go, and to do it using stream-of-consciousness writing — since I got way too heady and ‘lost’ the first time round.

All that to say, I’m at Chapter 2 of ‘Writing Without a Parachute’ which is titled ‘How to Support Yourself as a Writer’ .. and I am recording…