At first, I barely noticed. For the last two years, I have worked on writing and revising my novel, Jasper Hatchworth, at home outside of work hours. I had plenty of nights and weekends working late in the silence of a sleeping house, so the Tuesday after I quit felt more like a spontaneous Saturday where my family went off, leaving me home alone. Wednesday, I got lunch with a friend and spoke to him for a few hours about what it was like to quit and pursue my dream (he had been laid off from the same place several months before). It wasn’t until Thursday that the realization fully set in. This isn’t a long weekend; it’s my new life! And that Friday, I still got my full paycheck for the two weeks prior. Everything was great.

The following week I started getting my bearings under me. I developed a plan for moving forward with the next steps in my publishing journey, and I did some research into business costs and distribution basics. Most importantly, I knocked out many of the character development edits I needed for several subplots within the novel. Again, by the end of the week, everything was great.

However, this week, things started to shift. Moving on to general prose clean-up on part one of my novel slowed my progress significantly. I thought I would finish all of part one by today, but I only managed to finish half. I also started working at night again. When I first left my job, I stopped working at night because my night job had become my day job. But with a self-imposed deadline quickly approaching (I am very deadline-oriented), I worked all day and several hours at night all week long to try and finish on time.

But worst of all, the reality that I had quit my job came into full view today when I didn’t get another paycheck. No longer could I rely on someone else feeding my bank account for the labor I worked. I now have to produce my own income, and there are no revenue channels in place yet. My book isn’t even going to come out until next year. Reality’s at the door, and it’s time to wake up.

Of course, my wife and I planned for this. During the years before I quit, we squirreled away as much savings as we could. If spent modestly, the savings can last for several years. And of course, I have gotten the psychological boost of seeing that savings at its full value every time I check my investment account.

BUT today I had to withdraw from it for the first time. That psychological boost just turned into a hit. I suddenly felt as if the savings wouldn’t be enough. I am still over half a year away from publishing, and I am going to draw down on that account every month until then.

What was I thinking? I don’t take risks; I build systems to keep risk out of my life. I plan for the worst but rarely have to execute those plans. How can I cause my family the chaos this gamble will surely produce? I can’t do this. I CAN’T DO THIS!

My wife saw me spiralling before dinner and did what any good partner would. She hugged me, looked me in the eye, and said, “I’m not worried. I trust you.”

She trusts me.

I wanted to sabotage my writing career before it even started because that’s how you protect yourself when you are afraid. But my wife trusts me more than I trust myself, and I have a plan. Not to mention I have years before I have to pack it in if my gamble fails. I don’t need to worry; I need to trust myself the way my wife trusts me. I need to trust that everything I have done to get to this point was worth the investment I put in, because if it wasn’t, why did I work so hard to make this happen?

I might fail, but at least I will have tried. And that whirlwind of realizations was all brought on by my first missed paycheck.

Let’s hope it doesn’t happen again next month.

What I’m Reading Now

Kindle - Except the Dying by Maureen Jennings

Physical #1 - Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

Physical #2 - Maus by Art Spiegelman

Physical #3 - The Last House on the Street by Diane Chamberlain

What I Read Last

Physical - Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

Physical - The Deception of the Black Rose by K. G. Ryder

Kindle - Becoming Lilith “The One” by MZ Pak

Physical - Long Bright River by Liz Moore

WIP State

Draft 3 is coming along. All the notes from alpha readers have been addressed, and I am currently working through general prose cleanup. There are now 29 Chapters, a prologue, and an epilogue. The prologue and 6 chapters have been polished to the next stage, leaving 23 chapters and the epilogue remaining.

This upcoming week, I am submitting requests to editors for developmental edits.

Parting Thoughts

Writers need people to read their work. For the longest time, I never shared my work with anyone, including my wife. I wrote several novels that only I will ever read because I wasn’t concerned with publishing them. I knew someday I wanted to publish, but I was content writing only for myself. I didn’t understand the perfectionist trap because who would I polish my novels for? This was a mistake.

Now that I am moving away from writing only for myself, I wish I had shared those novels with my wife when I wrote them. I wish I had gone through the endless editing then and learned all I could instead of playing catch-up now. Those novels still weren’t fantastic and probably shouldn’t be published, but all that experience I could have had never happened.

If you are writing anything creative, have someone else read your work with a critical eye, even if you don’t plan on publishing it. You’ll thank me later.

—Andrew H. Palmer

I started the novel in 2023. It first took shape as a short story in a collection of 13 short stories. These stories were part of a YouTube channel I had created to showcase my efforts at transitioning away from a career in data science to a career in writing. Those videos were failures. This was due primarily to my own ignorance about the modern YouTube viewer. I wrote and recorded the narration for the stories at a pace of one 2,000-word short story a week. The turnaround made the stories inferior, and the format made them unappealing to viewers. Lessons were learned. But one of these short stories, The Tale of Jasper Hatchworth, had promise. My wife wanted more. She wanted the novel.

Over the next year and a half, I wrote that novel. It has become Jasper Hatchworth. Bookended with a revised version of the original short story, the novel contains two parts. The first, set in 1931, explores the childhood of Jasper Hatchworth when he arrives in the fictional town of Clemency, Nevada. His father’s abuse and alcoholism leave an indelible mark on Jasper, not to mention the social stigma that follows from accusations that he and his father killed a man. But the drive to escape his father’s influence is made stronger when he glimpses the possibility of living a stable life.

The second part, set in 1941, details the unraveling of everything Jasper holds dear. He bungles his chance to enlist after Pearl Harbor alongside his friends. He loses people he cares for deeply. His potential father-in-law shoots his toes off. And desperate to afford a house for the love of his life, he unwittingly falls in with his father’s cohort of outlaws. When everything falls apart, Jasper has to choose which road to damnation he will follow.

The novel required hundreds of hours of research that I can no longer access. Actions by political individuals cut funding to free resources and archives that I used to build my fictional world. This troubles me deeply because I wanted to write articles for this substack about my research. Many of the newspaper archives are now placed behind paywalls that didn’t exist when access was grant-funded. Recordings I used as inspiration have been deleted or removed. Foolishly, I believed that these resources would always be available and free. I wish I had downloaded more. All I have now are the few clippings and pictures I saved, but they are incomplete and without context. Maybe one day, these resources will receive funding again and open their archives to the laymen, though I fear permanent damage has befallen these collections.

I am only a researcher as much as my writing requires. I respect the education of professionals and rely heavily on their expert views to expedite my understanding of a topic. First and foremost, I am a writer. Stories are my main concern.

What kind of stories do I write? Well…sad stories. Naratives without happy and tidy endings. Happily ever after is not my style. Though Jasper Hatchworth is a historical drama, the next novel won’t be. The connective tissue that binds my work together is the dark tones and tragic characters. I don’t know if I would quite call it Gothic, but that might be close.

There was a day job before I decided to throw everything into my writing, but I don’t like introducing myself this way. I am more than my computer science career. I would rather say I am a father, outdoorsman, and lover of books. These are the things that matter most to me.

This writing career I am embarking on sure does look like it will be a wild ride with many, many bumps and turns. Come connect with me and allow me to draw you through the darker aspects of the human condition.