Besides how much money I make on my books, the other most common question most folks ask me is this: Are you going to quit your day job?

The answer? Maybe someday.

Don’t get me wrong. I would love, love, love to quit my day job and write full time. In fact, my writing is getting to the point now where it’s a full-time job in and of itself just writing and keeping up with everything else — the blog, Facebook, guest blogs, advertising, promotions … I’m always busy doing something, and there just never seems to be enough time to get everything done. (Seriously, I’d love to just take a week off and do nothing but eat, read, and sleep).

So what’s stopping me from quitting my day job? Well, the biggie is insurance. I work full-time, which means my company provides me with insurance. I don’t know how much I would have to pay if I was self-insured, but it’s probably a lot more than comes out of my paycheck every week right now.

Which leads me to the second thing stopping me from quitting my day job — a steady paycheck. It’s very, very nice to be able to count on the paycheck from my day job every two weeks. With my books, I’m lucky if I get a check three or four times a year. Sure, the checks are a little bigger than what I get at work, but it would make me real nervous if my books were my only source of income — especially since publishers are notoriously slow about sending out payments in the first place. And there’s always the risk that I won’t be able to sell more books — which would mean no more checks at all. It’s a scary thought.

And third, well, there’s me. I think I would go a little stir-crazy if I didn’t have something to get me out of the house on a regular basis. There’s only so much time you can spend with your characters before you go a little nuts. 😉

Of course, the real irony in all this is that I work at a newspaper — an industry that is dying a slow, painful death. If my newspaper is still around in five years (or at least still publishing in the same kind of format), I’ll be very surprised. Who knows? Depending on what happens at work, I may be trying to make it as a full-time author sooner than I think. Gulp!

But for right now, the book stuff is my own little side business. I’m not getting rich at it, but I love doing it — and that’s the most important thing.

Tags: On Writing