What would I do? I'll tell you what I did do three years ago. The company I worked for, and had worked for for 17 years, was taken over by a competitor and basically all of the offices bar one were closed down.
I was made redundant and ended up with a years salary. I wanted to write and so, with the absolute support of my wife who is a director of the local hospital, I set myself up as a freelance consultant doing what I had been doing, with a view to only taking work that was offered, ie not activly seeking it, for the first year, to enable me to write for most of the time.
At the end of that first year, I had written a pilot sitcom script and several sketches and contributions to radio shows that would take contributions. All of which came to nothing. I wrote another sitcom pilot and about that time was offered regular work for my consultancy service and I took it. It was another year before I got paid for the second sitcom pilot script but ultimately the project stalled and I have not earnt anything more than the initial pilot script fee.
Because of the economy, I have not had any work via the consultancy since last August and have been writing since then on a pretty much full time basis. I have still earnt no more money from writing and am living off past earnings and the genorosity of my wife.
If I'd have taken another job when I was made redundant I could have bought a porsche with the pay off or put the money in a trust fund for my son who was born a month before the take over was announced.
But even if I never get any further in this business than I already have, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. I gave it everything and selling a script justifies the effort and meant I wasn't just chasing something I had no hope of getting.
Redundancy is not an easy thing to go through, even if you really want it. I wish you the very best of luck with whatever you decide to do.
