It's early in the evening, and a thunderstorm massive and black and heavy as any I ever saw in Michigan is rolling up the seacoast toward Maine. New Hampshire will get the worst of it, and in our little green room at the top of a little yellow house, my family will weather the storm.

Bird and I have lived in a lot of little rooms at the tops of houses, over the years. In them, I've written two screenplays, a novel, three comic book series, and more little bits and bobs of imaginary, made-up stuff than I can count. Because I'm a writer. I made up my mind to be a writer ages ago, when I was a boy, and reaffirmed that to myself and my wife when we were busily falling in love, and falling in love with each other's art.

A thing like that, something ethereal and without form or shape, definition or substance, a thing like love, or a young boy's dream...a thing like that is easy to lose, in the drifting clutter we accumulate as we live. Bills drift over the writing desks we build when we are young, and job applications, and parking tickets, and paper money drift over them like old snow until the writing desk is just a table. Believe me. Things got cluttered and complicated in my life. I'm 26 years old, with all the flotsam that implies. There's a place that creative people fear, and thinking people, and people up against hardship: a rolling homogenous fog where every day is like the last and like the next.

The fog here in Maine smells like Melville's wide, cold sea, and if I had to learn this lesson, I'm glad I learned it here.

When we first moved here, I decided to try to work from home. I could take care of the dog, so she wouldn't be in her crate all day, and the flexibility of my schedule would allow me more time to write, it was reasoned. I applied for and was contracted to do several online jobs. Bird went to work at Michael's in the mornings, and I would sit down with my laptop and a cup of coffee to start, with a smirk, my "day's work."

Except...except by the time I was finished with six hours of my first work-from-home job and onto another, I had a pounding headache from staring mindlessly at a screen for a quarter of a day. Bird would come home from work, and I'd put on Bob's Burgers, and then I'd open my laptop and fill out surveys until I fell asleep. And then it was the next day. And the next. I was working from home.

Honestly, it might have gone on like that. Not forever--nobody can do that forever--but for long enough to blunt me down and burn me out. It was Bird who saved me. Of course it was. She always does; it's what best friends, lovers, and clever, insightful partners are for.

Working from home wasn't making me enough to pay my side of things, so I went and got a retail job as well. I decided I could do both. Just imagine the riches. The fact that I was considering doing anything for no reason other than the money should have tipped me off that I was way in the weeds, following lights in the woods toward a fabulous feast of the dead. It didn't. A month went by.

I worked a few retail shifts, did my online work when I got home, and wrote nothing at all. Not one word. Bird and I were settling in, one evening. I'd made a drink and was complaining that the online company I was contracting for was going to be demanding a lot more of my time, that they'd deemed my latest work Substandard and I had to complete hours and hours and hours of unpaid training to get my work back up to snuff; I was telling her how much stress I was under, how much I hated to online work, but the extra money--

"Then don't do it." She didn't say it nice. She just said it, blunt and hard, right to the forehead.

"What?" It was like a shock. It was like watching someone strike a match in the fog.

We went to bed. When I woke up, this morning, I sent out a batch of emails terminating every online contract I had. Then I made a pot of coffee and wrote 1700 words straight through. It was like letting out a breath I'd been holding, or...it was like being alive again. Nobody paid me anything for it: it's a short story I've been working on. When it's done, I'll submit it somewhere, but when I do, it won't be for the money (nobody writes short stories for the money). It'll be because I'm a writer, and writers write. They don't fill out surveys. They determine if their work is substandard. Bird and I moved to Maine so we could be closer to New York City. So I could focus on my writing career. I just needed a little reminding: we all do, sometimes. Sure, our budget is tighter than we're used to, but that's a good thing. I think creative people are sharper when they're hungry.

My freshman year of college, I watched an interview with Neil Gaiman on Youtube that changed the way I thought about my dreams. I heard Amanda Palmer say it in another interview that same year, but by then, I'd already decided. It is advice that has enabled me to do everything I've ever done, and it comes in two parts:

1) Don't leave yourself a safety net. Don't give yourself Something to Fall Back On, because then, when you fail (and I have failed over and over and over), at least you tried, thank goodness you had something to fall back on. I have nothing to fall back on, by design. My degree is worthless, and my resume will only let me do two things: minimum-wage jobs and writing. That's it. That's all I have, and since I refuse to call myself a "minimum-wage professional," by default I am a "writer."

2) If you think of something you really, really want to do, just go do that. It took me forever to actually get up the nerve to do this one. It's simultaneously enormously hard and the simplest thing in the world to do: if you want to write a novel, there is nobody in the world who can stop you from writing a novel except yourself. People might not pay you to do the things you want to do, at first, not right away, but they can't stop you doing them. Write a novel, make a movie, record an album, write thousands of haiku about the eroticism of goats' eyes. It doesn't matter. The secret is simple: if you want to do something, all you have to do is that thing. Voila.

This morning, I tore down my safety net. As it tumbled down, so did the bills, the stress, and the hours I'd been wasting on it. The bits of greenish paper I'd been chasing flipped off in a clean ocean breeze. And I looked around, and I decided what I wanted to do. I wanted to write. Crime Fiction, I thought. I brewed a pot of coffee, and put on some slinky, dangerous jazz, and wrote.

Yesterday, when I went to bed, I had nothing more than I had when I woke up. Tonight, I'll have part of a story that didn't exist before. A story full of dangerous women, barking guns, soft light, and hard drinks. I'll finish it this weekend, send it off, and then write something else. I have scripts to read, musicals to work on, and words. Such words.

So. Let me feel foolish for you, and follow me back to the path. Cut down your safety net. Turn your back to the precipice; leave nothing to fall back on. Close your eyes, decide what you want to do, and go do that. Decide what you are, and be that. It's up to you, whether you're a bank teller or a musician. Whether you're a cashier or a filmmaker. A waiter or a writer. Bank Tellers handle bank accounts. Musicians make music. Cashiers handle money, filmmakers make films. Waiters bring food to people.

Writers write.

--On the first day of July, in a small green room at the top of a yellow house in Maine