{{{Lilty}}}
Bitch advice needed: I've been in major career redirection mode over the past 24-48 hours. Those of you who read Great Write Way know that I've had a bit of an epiphany that I'm not so much a romance writer as a writer of epic historical fiction that happens to have a love story as an A-plot or important B-plot. I think it's the right choice, because my muse is turning cartwheels and telling me about all the wonderful things I can write now that I don't have to worry as much about genre rules, page count, and the like. But the odds are it'll take me longer to make my first sale, and therefore longer to achieve my dream of being a full-time author, which impacts the day job choices I'm trying to make.
Until yesterday my ideal was to get a work-from-home position, and I was looking at fairly menial, clerical work--something that would still allow me to care for Annabel and have lots of spare time and energy to write. Now I'm thinking a little more long-haul. Not the rest of my life, necessarily, but the next 5-10 years. I'm more open to full-time than I was before, though I'd still happily take a 60-80% FTE gig if I could find one. And I want something a little more career-focused, albeit still the kind of job where I could leave at 5:00 p.m. most days, since the job will be very much #3 behind family and writing. I'm thinking academia, since 90% of my work experience is there, and looking at all the admin specialist, program manager, and asst to dean positions at UW. Or anything event planning or writing/editing-related, if I can find ones that aren't in development. I'm never going back to development--I've learned my lesson.
Make sense? It feels right, except for the part where it feels wrong to have changed my writing and career goals out of the blue on the strength of an "aha!" moment.