Shh! Don’t use the R word: How not to Retire

A few years ago a friend of mine retired. He’d been looking forward to it for years. He bought a cottage on the isle of Anglesey, in Wales. He furnished it, then waited for the moment when he could walk away from forty-five years of work and drop down into his new patio lounger, glass in hand, and watch the tide coming in and out. The big day came. He moved over to his new home and a week later he dropped down dead.

It could have happened to anyone. We were all shocked and saddened. But so often we hear similar tales, and the common thread seems to involve that dreaded transition from being needed, respected, indispensable… to being surplus-to-requirements.

You are going to want to avoid this happening to you. Whether you are in your thirties, forties or fifties, the time to avoid the scourge of transition is now. This isn’t about planning for retirement, it is about planning for non-retirement.

Who wants to feel useless? All that training and knowledge gone to waste? I think cloud-watching could be an over-rated pastime.

The secret is: Do the thing. You know, the thing you always wanted to do. The career you couldn’t choose because you had a family to feed, a mortgage to pay. Photographer, artist, actor, musician, and in my case, author. And I suggest you do it now. Don’t wait. Don’t get to that big day and find yourself looking up at a learning curve that resembles The Eiger.

Of course your day job might also be your thing. If that is so then congratulations, and I have nothing here to offer by way of advice. But of course you have no plans to retire, anyway. Why should you give up doing the thing you love? The rest of us, well, we need to start now.

Begin to dabble. Start acquiring the skills. Take a little time to ease into your chosen creative world and learn the connections. There’s often a barrier to entry, a gatekeeper, and this could be the insider knowledge about how to submit to exhibitions, how to get into Musical Directors’ address books, becoming known in the local amateur theatre circuit or knowing where to submit stories. Get to know the gatekeeper early and get yourself a set of master keys. None of this has to detract from your career. There’s nothing wrong with hobbies. Except you know: it isn’t a hobby, it’s a beginning. It’s that thing that will grow and become all-consuming. Your raison d’être.

Then, when the time comes for you to make the transition – note we’re not using the R word anymore – you will find there is no transition. You are ready. You are accessing a supporting income, that some people call a pension, to allow you a moderately risk-free transition into the thing you always wanted to do. The old day job is no longer a precious jewel you have lost but an old thing you can at last push aside so you can get on with the real meaning of your life. If you can earn some income from your former-hobby/new-career, then great, every bit helps. If you don’t earn much, then no matter, you’re not going to starve.

All of this is subject to your own circumstances of course: having access to a reasonable pension, retaining your health, having a conducive domestic situation. These things matter and they are all part of your forward planning, not just your creative thing but taking exercise and being serious about financial plans. But if you haven’t done so already, now is the time to act. Find your thing and take those first steps.

Mjke Wood took his first steps more than thirty years ago, when he started writing short stories, submitting to magazines, collecting rejections, and learning the craft from his many mistakes. He now writes full time. His novel, Deep Space Accountant is available on Amazon and other platforms. His stories are available in many science fiction and fantasy magazines. One such story has been optioned for a motion picture on which script writers are working at this very moment.

Mjke now writes full time.  He doesn’t miss the day job.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

A question asked of every writer at some time is: where do you get your ideas?

Image credit:Pixabay

I usually have a flippant answer stored and ready to use. Ideas come through the plumbing in my house, because every time I climb into the shower the ideas flow, and of course this is the moment when I’m most separated from my notebook. So many times an idea has come while showering, only to be rubbed away in the towelling process soon after. I fixed that problem. I bought a waterproof notebook.

It’s a silly answer to the question of course, because ideas come at any time from any trigger. It is rare that I can even remember what triggered any single idea.

Deep Space Accountant is different, though. It’s one of the few story prompts I’ve had for which I can remember the exact thought process that gave rise to the idea. And no, I wasn’t in the shower.

For Deep Space Accountant I must thank the cartoonist, Gary Larson. I love Gary Larson’s cartoons and I have several books of his collected work. One cartoon in particular rang bells. It shows an accountant standing on a promontory with his briefcase. The caption reads Seymour Frishberg: Accountant of the Wild Frontier. (I’m not going to infringe copyright and post the image here, but here's a link.)

Straight away I wondered what a science fiction version of the Seymour Frishberg cartoon might look like. Pretty much the same layout except that he’d be in a spacesuit instead of a business suit. And maybe there’d be the odd ringed planet in the sky.

Then I started wondering about the accountant’s story. Why is an accountant in space? Deep space? And there it was. I even had my title - originally Nathaniel D Nicholson: Deep Space Accountant, I changed it to Elton D Philpotts midway through the first draft, then I dropped the name  part when I realised I’d have a tough time cramming it all onto the book cover.

You’d think, also, that my job as an accountant might have had an influence? Not true. The idea came to me in 1985, long before I ever considered accountancy as a career. Back then I earned my crust by compiling bus timetables and duty rosters.

So, I wrote a first draft, hand written on secretary’s spiral notepads. It was horrible. I couldn’t write. I couldn’t plot. I knew nothing about accountancy. I put it away in a drawer and carried on writing short stories.

Flash forward twenty-five years. I’d become an accountant. I’d started winning the odd award for my writing. I found Deep Space Accountant in a box.

It was still horrible.

I put it back in the box and buried it. And started again.

Different plot. Different characters. Different Result.

Want to know how it turned out? Find out here. 

Deep Space Accountant is the first book in the Sphere of Influence series, available in paperback and all major e-book formats.

The Sphere of Influence – Audio Excerpt.

Audio books are a brilliant way of keeping on top of your reading, while driving, gardening, doing DIY... waiting in A&E. 

My daily commute is history now that I have finished with the old 9 'til 5 job, but there are still plenty of opportunities for slotting a CD into the stereo and losing myself in a good book.

I thought it would be fun to share an audio excerpt from Deep Space Accountant. It comes with a health warning related to my non-thespian roots, but with that in mind here's a link to a reading taken from early on in Deep Space Accountant, where Elton D Philpotts is en route to an interview.

audio

It is an important interview for Elton. He doesn’t know it yet, but the outcome will also have repercussions for the whole Sphere of Influence. His journey is not going well. Elton is not having a very good day.

Deep Space Accountant is the first book in Mjke Wood's Sphere of Influence Series. Why not give the ebook a try? Check out mjkewood.com for links to Amazon Kindle, iBooks, Kobo and Nook, and also for the paperback edition. There's a free ebook up for grabs, too.

Vintage Radio

I did another interview this week for Will Redfearn's Community hour on vintage radio picking up where we left off round about the same time last year. We had a few technical hitches in the studio, so in the end Will decided to record the show rather than put it out live. It will be aired on Saturday29 Oct and repeated on Sunday 30th Oct at 9pm. True to the spirit of high definition radio, I wore my Deep Space Accountant T-shirt especially for the interview. If you listen carefully you'll see it.

Last year we finished the interview with my making vague references to some 'exciting news' that I couldn't talk about. That was, of course, the sale of the option for turning The Last Days of Dogger City into a film. It's  good that I'm able to talk about it this time round, and it got me fired up about it all over again. In fact I just saw a tweet, tonight, from one of the production team who mentions how she's working on the script right now, so yeah, it's still progressing.

At the moment I'm working in my caravan, camped out deep in the Cotswolds, near Cirencester. We're on our annual pilgrimage down to Bristolcon where we'll hear panels on all manner of sci-fi goodness. I'm typing this tethered to my phone that has an intermittent half a bar of minus one G internet. There's every chance I'll be home before this blog actually posts. I'll pass each solitary bit of data as it is released from the candle powered servers and sent vaguely north. If that turns out to be the case: Bristolcon was brilliant! Had a great time. (How's about that, a bit of time dilation thrown in for you. Our caravan is doing relativistic speeds up the M5.)

Untethered - 5 - The View from the Other Side

I'm now three full weeks on from the big life-changing event of retirement. How do I feel?

Well, in a word, knackered.

We decided to travel around to make the transition easier, so we had a few days in Cambridge. The photo (left) is taken just around the corner from the Cavendish Laboratories, where they probably ran out of wall space for all the blue plaques they needed. James Clerk Maxwell, the developer of electromagnetic theory, founded the lab, but then a further 29 Nobel Laureates have passed through the doors since. In the next street is the pub where Crick and Watson went to announce their discovery of the structure of DNA. To walk along this street and think about all the great minds of science that have gone before is an amazing thing.

Another amazing thing is to watch all the bicycles dodging in and out of the buses and wagons, and to think how many great minds of the future could so easily be ground to mush beneath the wheels of a juggernaut, all for want of a few proper cycle lanes. Yeah, there's a rant coming on, so I'll stay positive and move to Scarborough.

 The Grand Hotel in Scarborough was home to Fantasycon by the Sea. We went early, because the hotel rates were good and we thought Scarborough might make a good destination for a holiday.

It turns out we fell in love with Scarborough. I've always been a sucker for Victorian seaside towns, and Scarborough is up there amongst the best.

It helped that our hotel was also one of the major landmarks in the town. It stands huge and intimidating on the cliffs above the South Bay. Our room had a sea view, and we could sit in bed each morning and watch the sun rise over the North Sea. A bit of a novelty, this. We've always lived on the west coast and for us the sun is meant to set over the sea.

From the hotel it is a three minute walk to the centre of town, or, in the other direction, across the iron footbridge, there are cliff walks and gardens and coastline for miles.

This was meant to be a relaxing weekend, going to panels, chatting with friends, sitting in the bar... According to my Fitbit we walked ten miles each day, apart from the Saturday, the main day of the con, when we only managed five miles.

The con itself? One of the best I've been to. All the panels were good. Had the chance to chat with lots of interesting people from the Fantasy writing world, and even extended this on the train when we met a lovely couple heading out to catch a flight to take them on holiday, with whom we chatted most of the way home.

Here we are on the open top bus (I had to go on a bus) that runs all the way along the promenade between the South and North Bays.

So what next? Do I start taking it easy? Is it time, now, to break out the slippers? Not a chance. We arrived home on Sunday night and drove to Sussex the next morning (via a stop-off Banbury) This was an art-related mission for Sarah. I owed her this after three days of fantasy panels.

We stayed in Worthing. Another hotel. Another sea view. Another Victorian seaside town. The pier was fun, and we even won a few tuppences in the penny arcades.

So now the transition is over and it's time to produce some words. My writing schedule has been all over the place during the retirement rollercoaster, so I've been easing into the process with some short stories. My work in progress has the working title Cold Robots and Other Dead Animals, and I'm enjoying the buzz of getting some new words down.

Deep Space Accountant is now out in the world. I'm keeping the price low during this initial launch phase, and I'm cracking my knuckles ready to begin the first edit on the second in the series, The Lollipop of Influence.

Deep Space Accountant

That last item on my post retirement tick list probably needs some explanation. I didn't intend to time it this way, it's just how the pieces seemed to fall, but releasing Deep Space Accountant turned out to be a great way of taking my mind off the somewhat heavy weight life event that just happened. Here's the cover blurb:

Could this be the worst job interview in the history of the universe? Possibly. So when Elton D Philpotts lands his dream job he can’t help wondering how. And why.

Somebody in the Space Corps needs him, and they need him bad.

But the work is dull; nothing like the glamorous, planet-hopping lifestyle he expected. Then he sees things he should not have seen: A hidden ledger, dodgy accounting transactions, bogus gate receipts.

And when a whole starship disappears who are they going to blame?

A frantic race across the Sphere of Influence takes Elton and his friends into adventure and dangers he could never have imagined.

Deep Space Accountant is the first sci-fi comedy adventure in the Sphere of Influence series.

You can find Deep Space Accountant as a paperback and an ebook on Amazon. It's also on iTunes and Kobo.

Untethered 2

Four weeks to go to freedom. I was always under the impression I’d be in full-on winding down mode by now. Putting my feet up. Gazing out of the office window and thinking up book plots.

The slice of cheese is getting smaller. Not long to go now.

Instead the workload has gone insane – covering for two others who are on holiday, doing my own day-job, trying to self-manage my succession and knowledge transfer (a thirty-two-second task, that one, ha ha!) I’m even scrambling up something of a steep and greasy learning curve, doing the holiday cover, delving into areas I’ve never been before. Why? Come on. I’ll be retired in four weeks!

So in the studious world of writing, my timetable and master plan made the most of the thought space I’d have from my gradual escape from workday pressure. I have my novel, Deep Space Accountant, completed, edited and crying out for a cover and release date. I have my short story collection awaiting a final tranche of editorial suggestions, due back from my editor at the end of this week. Oh, and that one needs a cover, too, not to mention a synchronised launch with DSA. Then I seem to have taken this uber relaxed moment to undertake a new program of marketing for Travelling in a Box, my nothing-to-do-with-Scifi travel book.

There we go, then. If you think I’m nuts you’re only wrong in terms of timing. I’m not gaga yet but I’m heading down the steep road to the padded cell with rocket skates on my feet.

Strange Angel

It’s funny the different ways you can stumble upon a good book. Last week I was in Liverpool library. I’d done the work I needed to do, so I was hanging about in the botany section, waiting for my wife to finish researching lichens. I picked a random book from the shelf, called Strange Angel, by George Pendle. It had nothing at all to do with Botany, someone had replaced it on the wrong shelf.

The book was a biography of Jack Parsons, one of the early pioneers of rocketry in the US. I’d never heard of him. I looked at page one, just to get an overview, and...  I couldn’t put it down. I checked the book out of the library and carried on reading on the bus home. I’m now just over three-quarters of the way through.

Parsons was an odd sort of rocket scientist, because he led the field, even though he wasn’t a scientist, and he mixed his enthusiasm for rocketry with a disturbing fascination for the occult. It’s a compelling brew.

Parson’s other passion was science fiction, and his biography documents the birth of the golden age of SF, the first edition of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories, and Parson’s connection with Robert Heinlein and other members of the LASFS, the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society.

I’ve just read a chapter about the first ever World Science Fiction Convention, which took place in 1939 at the World Fair in New York. The narrative tells about the deep political rift amongst the 200 or so members, split between the Futurians and New Fandom. The Futurians (a young Isaac Asimov was one) believed in SF being a medium to promote all that is good in science and learning. The New Fandom group thought Science Fiction should focus only on entertainment, and that the Futorians were dangerously Red. These were not just scholarly debates over a meal; the arguments had passion. Scuffles broke out, and some members were ejected from the Worldcon for fighting. It all sounds kind of familiar.

At the moment I’m fascinated by accounts of the early days of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, how it grew from a collection of tin huts located in the Aroyo Seco in Pasadena, a remote, dry river bed, where rockets could be fired without bothering anybody. I love how they adopted the term 'Jet Propulsion', just to obscure the truth that it was all about rockets, because the term ‘rockets’ had a stigma at the time. Rocketry was not considered proper science, it was grown-up boys playing with things that went bang.

A highly entertaining read. For anyone interested in the dawn of rocket science in the US, and in the early days of the Science Fiction genre, it is well worth tracking a copy down.

The Last Days of Dogger City

I have some news. I've been sitting on this for a couple of weeks, waiting until the contracts have been signed, and that has been a very hard thing to do, but now I can talk about it.
A few months ago I had a story published in Analog called The Last Days of Dogger City. That was just about as big a thrill as I could imagine, but now the story has now been optioned, to be made into a film script, by Carylanna Taylor and Jacob Okada at First Encounter Productions.
I am giddy with excitement.
I'm one of those people who sit in the cinema reading the credits right up until the last ones have rolled by and waiting for the lights to go up. This week I've been doing it and comparing font sizes between the screen writers and the other contributors... and dreaming of the day.

Vintage Radio

Here's an image taken from the studio cam at Vintage Radio this morning. I had the pleasure of  being interviewed by Will Redfearn for the Community Hour. A very enjoyable morning. The show ran from 10 until 11, then afterwards we continued our chat for nearly an hour because we had so many shared interests: books, caravanning vs motor caravanning, big band music...
I love what Vintage Radio are doing. They are all volunteers, and are providing a connection, not just for Wirral residents, but for ex-pat Wirral people all over the world. I was delighted to be asked to do this. How often does a person get the chance to talk about themselves for a whole hour, and choose the music to play in between interview segments. It was a great opportunity to give a plug to Travelling in a Box, too, and also Wirral Writers, who are always on the lookout to welcome new members.
The fun doesn't end here, either. Tomorrow I'm off to Nottingham, for Fantasycon, where I hope to meet up with writer friends from around the country, and then come home buzzing with a head full of ideas and even more hyper-enthusiasm than I have today.

Oh, and PS. The interview will be repeated on Saturday 31st October, times not announced yet, but they'll be up on the Vintage Radio website soon. It will give me a chance to listen to it, relive the moment, and cringe at all the things I should have, and shouldn't have said.