Another week down. Another week I still am not bringing money in. The job hunt has continued to have small ups and mostly downs. I have finally gotten a little feedback beyond the simple “you were a great candidate but we went with someone else.” Mostly I’ve gotten feedback related to things completely outside of my control, internal referrals were brought forward, a candidate with specific industry experience was found, things like that. Some recent feedback was a little more useful and will feed into future interviews a little, but it’s minor in the grand scheme. Ultimately that position was re-cast anyhow. (How I was laid off to being with now that I think of it.)

As for creative/fiction writing, it looks like I’ve managed to (barely) make it half-way through the story a day challenge. That’s pretty cool. I’m pretty sure I only did 4 or 5 days last year.  I’m still not quite done with the first draft of the novel, that’s not cool. It’s close though. Very close. The little progress bar in Scrivner is mostly green now, no more red. If I don’t finish the first draft this week then it’s 100% because I didn’t do the work. If I really work at it I should be able to finish by tomorrow night’s Castle Rock Writer’s meeting, which was the secondary goal outside of by the end of April. In hindsight by the end of April was a little aggressive considering: it’s the first time I’ve written a fiction novel of any kind, it ended up being in a genre I’m not intimately familiar with, I haven’t been great at regular writing for the last year, and I’m splitting focus three ways on an average day.

I’m halfway through a freelance writing course. This one concentrates on email but has things that can carry beyond email. There are more courses available from the same place for case studies and white papers, which I think would be more fun (and profitable possibly) than emails and blog posts to do. With knowledge I am gaining confidence and if the job search continues to be unfruitful it will at the least be joined by attempts to get freelance writing clients this summer. If (When?) that happens which one proves more fruitful will be an interesting data point to look at.