Thursday Morning

I've got some pretty big things to do at work today. We're on a mission to nail some editorial coverage for one of our new games in major magazines, so I'm going to use some of my freelancing experience to attempt that. Granted, these are the kinds of magazines I temped for when I was in New York trying to start my publishing career there, not the kind I typically wrote for, but I think I can make the upgrade.

Speaking of freelance work, I've got a net-meeting tonight with a tech firm down in San Francisco I managed to hook up with for a couple hours of freelance work each week. It's funny, they played WizKids games, and saw some of my articles and press releases and contacted me about doing a bit of work for them here and there. It may be the first time someone has actually knocked on my door about me doing freelance work - not that I'm complaining, mind you, but it's still a weird feeling, and I get the feeling that once they see what I can do, it might turn into more freelance work as I have the time. Not a bad supplement, and it certainly won't hurt to add it to the portfolio.

The diversity of some of my past work amazes me. On one hand, I keep comparing myself to other fiction writers - Nabokov and Stephen King, who were already publishing short stories by the time they were my age. But, then again, I turn around and go "I'm relatively young, and I've worked for the Indian Nations Council of Governments and Chevron-Texaco." The impressive nature of my portfolio comes from nonfiction, technical writing and editing, rather than the fiction I'd really like to be writing. I hope I don't end up blinking, wake up at sixty with an impressive body of technical work, an ulcer, and permanent back problems, but still not a single piece of fiction published. I'm sure that won't happen, but it's a fear.