I don't have a terrible life. I'm not a millionaire, I can sometimes even afford to eat TWICE in one day, but we stay afloat. We do that by my awesome ability to write novels in two weeks. I've done it, I swear. Full-on, NanoWriMo length novels in two weeks. I've been doing it for two years now and next month I'm supposed to see a significant increase in my pay, then for the next two months it will go up until I'm making a month's income on one book. Yay.
I have to get to next month though and right now, my brain is tapped out. Part of the reason I can write a novel in two weeks is because I use this ingenious method of creating an outline. This month, even with my nifty little outline, I'm floundering. I want to delete what I've written already and go back to line A. I can't do that though, that's a lot of work I'll be throwing away. So, I keep staring off into space, waiting for inspiration to come along and make me not hate this new book that I'll be adopting out.
Because, that's how I have to look at it. Yes, I've seen two of my babies go on to be Amazon best sellers. Yes, others that are up there do really, really well, no I don't have the time to write or the money to do more with my own. Because, I have a few of my own up. They usually pull in enough to buy the puppies their kibble and give Mummy a nice shiny new tube of toothpaste or another bottle of Fairy liquid (dish detergent). Those others are my babies, and I want to see them fly, but they aren't MY babies. Somebody has adopted them, taken them to raise, shined them up, and made them their own. They aren't mine anymore.
I think part of the problem at the moment is a bad case of burnout combined with, where's my fella? Oh, @centaurmystic is in the house somewhere, but even though we are both at home together, I don't always get to see him. Because, I work from home. Seven days a week. Except lately. I've missed a deadline or two this month. I've also started a totally new job, in a totally new direction and I'm still getting used to that. It's writing but it's more research than novel. I love it.
Overall, there's a lot of pros and cons to being a ghostwriter. For some reason, there's a lot of "you shouldn't tell people that" as well. I'm not the one that should be ashamed, am I? I don't think so anyway...I write something, I sell it, the new owner gets the headache of marketing and trying to earn back what they paid me. I just write the stuff.
I'm a bit cynical about it all, and I know things now that would get ignored so superhard if I told the world about it. The main thing is, once or twice a month we get to go out and take random pictures like the one of us above. We get to live in Portugal without having to worry about getting "proper" jobs. It is exhausting though, and one day, I'll make a proper post on the pros and cons of ghostwriting. That elusive one day I keep mentioning. For now, I'm back to staring at Line A through ZA. I need some more ice cream this month.