It’s an odd thing, get­ting choked up over a paycheck.

But it makes sense. You can guess what my biggest fear is with this whole grand exper­i­ment: That I’ll fail. That I’ll have to throw up my hands and go back to an office job, unable to make enough money from writing to sus­tain myself.

As of Sep­tember 21st, I’ll have been a full time writer for 5 months, with 3 of those spent acti­vated and in uni­form. That can be a drag on the “full time” aspect of my writing, but I won’t always be called up this often and anyway, I love the work. As I sit here looking at my pay­check (and the deduc­tions for health insur­ance, which is crit­ical to my being able to sup­port myself as a writer) it’s a little emo­tional for me.

This is because it comes with the dawning real­iza­tion that I really might be able to do this. Between the short stints on active duty as a reservist and the slugs of money that come from advance pay­outs and sub­sidiary rights sales, I might really and truly never have to go back to the office. I might actu­ally be able to spend the rest of my days *only* doing what I love. I never thought that was pos­sible, but this pay­check is making me think it just might be.

My mil­i­tary pay is a matter of public record. On the writing side of things, the SHADOW OPS series has sold Czech lan­guage and audio book rights. Writing advances pay out based on mile­stones. I’ll get a slug of money when CONTROL POINT sees print. I’ll get another slug of money when FORTRESS FRONTIER is deliv­ered and accepted by Ace. I’ve got an orig­inal fic­tion pro­posal in the hopper, and am cur­rently nego­ti­ating some pos­sible media tie-in work. All of those things mean money.

I’ve men­tioned this before, but it bears repeating: at a panel at the 2010 New York City Comic Con, Brandon Sanderson said that he stays moti­vated to write by imag­ining a cubicle chasing him. That’s what awaits him if he fails, a boring office job. That image struck home and it sticks with me. Granted, Sanderson is a titan in the field. It would be nice to reach his gid­dying heights of suc­cess and I’ll strive to do that, but I’m not counting on it.

But with the reserves, I don’t need to. This pay­check is a bran­dished sword, holding that slavering cubicle at bay. I *love* the Coast Guard. I *love* writing spec­u­la­tive fiction.

And I am begin­ning to believe that I might never have to do any­thing else.