So this column started as a way to track a small press writer (me) on a hopeful career upswing. Or at least an attempt. So let's stop and take stock, shall we?

I have a book out, and it's selling decently. I have plans to have another out this summer, and we have good hopes for that one as well. I have so many things in the works it scares me to look directly at the list.

None of it manages to pay me enough. That's the nature of the game. So how am I doing, in my own head? Fantastically. I have people asking me to write things, doors are opening, and I am managing to get somewhere. It may not be the fastest climb in history, but it certainly not standing still or moving backwards.

Which is what you have to aim for.

There have been pitfalls along the way, to be sure, though. I'm sleeping less, relaxing less, and generally working more. There's no end in sight to that upswing either. And that's the biggest problem for me: the higher I go the more work there is to do until I reach some upper limit. Now if that upper limit is hit and isn't making me enough money to leap to the next stage, what do I do?

This is not all about money -- I don't want to give that impression -- but part of my goal is to try and make it as a full time writer, which means money has to be a major yardstick for what I can and cannot do, even if I don't want it to be. It leaves me in a strange spot.

Because I don't do this for money. I do it because I can't not do it. Mmm double negatives. Anyway, I would write regardless, and have, and don't see that changing. But if I keep taking jobs that pay X and then get offered jobs that pay 2X, and yet are too full of up X jobs ... what can I do? What if the 2X jobs go away because the offer was there and missed?

The same problem in reverse: How do I say no to Job X that I want to do simply because I want to leave a slot open for Job 2X that might never happen? It's all a juggling act and one that has to be played as close to perfect as I can possibly get. And sometimes that juggling can get in the way of the actual job, that is to say: writing.

I dunno, there is no answer to any of this, all there is is doing the work and getting things done as best I can. Getting better with every gig and pushing harder and harder until I die, break, or make it.

So that's what I'll do.