My time as a student and professional job dodger is coming to an end…

I was wondering how all you glorious people conduct your working lives to include acceptable doses of both writing and interacting with other human beings.

The thought I might lose precious writing time because I have to “earn a living” (pah!) is making me a tad irritable.

Thoughts would be welcome. So would buckets of money.

Ta muchly.

How are you going to earn a living? That is until next year when you are a successful writer.

I used to get up at 5 o’clock in the morning. I haven’t done that in awhile, which is why neither my writing nor reviewing has not been getting done. That’s my great secret for juggling work, single parent hood, and writing- lack of sleep.

With the exception of poetry and the rare short story, I couldn’t do it – hence five unfinished novels over twenty years! I was also hindered by writing masses of non-fiction for my profession – and the two styles conflicted.

Also hence why two years ago I sold everything I owned, retired very early and moved to a country where the exchange rate gave me time to try to get something finished and published.

Just by luck, it also allows me to live to quite a high living standard – until the money runs out.

Now I’ve finished two novels (good they may or may not be) and am working on two more. Plus a lot of short stories.

Avedis gave me an idea. Maybe I can marry a rich man and quit work.

For one, try not to have a job that sucks up all your time. (That may sound obvious, but you never know…) Second, don’t feel guilty about saying no to friends/family. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can go several days without needing to socially interact. Having hermit tendencies definitely helps when I’m in serious writing mode. If people understand why you’re turning them down and support you, that’s even better. If they don’t, make up any reasonable excuse, hide out, and write away.

Of course if I really had my way, I’d go the rich husband route as well.

That’s what I did (sort of). I haven’t stopped working, but I spend more time writing now.

Harald, Hell is right: you have to get up at 5:00. That’s what I did when I was working for a company a few years ago. I got up EVERY morning at 5:00 and wrote. Stop rolling your eyes and saying out loud “Idiot Americans”!

And Avedis has a point too. Sell everything you have. OK, at 21 that might not be much. I actually gave most of my stuff away when I move to Germany. Then, move to Germany or France and teach English. If you’re good, you can make about 50 euros an hour, but you’ll have to start working for a language institute for a lot less at first. But I still don’t know what your degree is in.

Thank you one and all for the responses. I have a special talent for sleep deprivation and morbid seclusion so I’m looking forward to the four hours a night I’m soon to get.

DC… my degree was in English Lit, which is conspicuously worthless in the real world. This means I’m in line fora series of low-level admin positions before I set the world ablaze with my sonnets. Teaching is one profession that I am not cut out for. Perhaps one day when I cast aside the shackles of self-interest I could find it in me to educate the youth of tomorrow. Alas… little kids drive me batty.

I actually spent three summers writing rushed first drafts of novels, preparing myself for being cut off the process of creating something from scratch. If my time really runs out, the idea is to redraft this work one page at a time and slowly work my way through them all.

Back to my cupboard before the work bell tolls. I have work to complete.

Then don’t teach little kids. I’ve never taught little kids (except a particularly precocious nine-year-old bitch – she kicked me and made me read the first fourteen pages of Harry Potter. I’m not sure which one was worse.). Anyway, now I teach only adults.

What do you want to do? I also have a degree in English Lit (but my undergraduate degree was in Recording Industry Management). Why don’t you take a year off and then go to grad school?

So many people talk about how their jobs leave them no time for writing, so I thought I’d throw my own experience into the discussion.

I wrote more back when I had a job. I’ve been on disability and unemployed since 2001, and have written next to nothing new since then. Maybe some people find motivation to write in their dreary “day jobs” – for them, writing is a way to forget, for a little while, that one spends hours each day in a little cubicle next to a guy with a stapler fetish, or in a room full of somewhat violent teenagers who do not want to learn anything about art, or behind the cash register of a grocery store where it is always the cashier’s fault if there are no more diet cheese crackers in Aisle 4…

(I agree with DC – teach adults. It’s so much more rewarding to teach people who want to learn, and adults are, where they want that particular class or not, at least there by choice. And since they’re adults, you can kick them out of the classroom if they start trying to brain you with a text book.)

I have often thought that I have produced more when my schedule was full. Recently I gave up one of my clients so that I could spend more time writing. I’ve actually spent less time writing. I lie in bed and enjoy the extra hour of sleep. The moral of the story is, oh hell, I don’t know. Do you know, Hell?

So Harold, what’s your writing life like right now? Do you have a consistent writing time, or just write whenever you can? I wish I could be awake enough at 5 to write, but I think everything would be gibberish. How do you people manage that?

I didn’t work for a few months last year and I actually got a lot of writing done, but only because I kept telling myself that I’d never have that much free time again (there was a lot of video gaming as well…I wasn’t completely productive). From what I’ve heard, most published writers have to keep some kind of day jobs to pay the bills, contrary to popular belief.

Still looking for those buckets o’ money, by the way…

Since DC was distracted by thoughts of hell, he forgot his own morals… I mean the point of his post, but I think I understand what he’s talking about.

When we have a busy, structured life, we make sure we have time for our creative outlets, but if there is little structure, the bed is more inviting.

I knew Hell would get it. Thanks.

Astrid M…

I have a part-time job as of now, meaning I lose about an hour and a half of “quality” writing time.

I set myself two hours a day to write and usually within that time I get a suitable chunk done. I agree with the others as well, whe I had too much free time I often deviated from stories and ideas and wrote a bouquet of crap.

So I think having limited time can be a great motivator.

DC/Weaver…

I think the finest day jobs for a writer are the ones with as little responsibility as possible. My father worked as a night-time security guard in the middle of nowhere, meaning he had infinite time to write (even though he never did ).

Weird guy.

I had taken a haitus from research and got a job as a private duty nurse taking care of a little boy. When he was alseep, there was nothing for me to do except write. I got my 1st draft pumped out in two months.

I “wrote” my first published story in my head while working in a factory where they made small furniture items and other things out of wood. When one spends 8 hours a day sanding wooden checkers boards, or making woven waste baskets, there’s not a lot of thinking needed for the job itself… I think I wrote the story as much to maintain my sanity (what there is of it) as for any other reason.

I quit Rutgers the middle of my senior year to finish my first novel because (an unnamed popular playwright at the time) told me I was too good a writer to be wasting my time in college. That was 1976. After two years and no publishing success I started a cabinet making business so I could “work when I want and have time to write”. Then my wife got pregnant. Guess who stopped writing? Now, 30 years later, I’m successful enough to pull back a bit and write at least two hours a day. This started just about one year ago. I also spend at least another hour on URBIS or other writing sites. I still need to monitor my business on a daily basis. I truly feel for you younger people. I got to ride the last wave of the last set off the beach of easy money. My advice? Find some kind of writing or word related job that keeps you in the game and marry someone with a good job and health benefits. I’m not kidding. Out of all the would be writers I have known I have only two friends who make their living off the word dodge. One is a successful playwright (not the one back at school, she may even be dead by now) and the other is the chief speech writer for Altrea (aka Phillip Morris). It took them 20 years to establish their reputations as writers. Both men married women who held down the fort in the meantime. My 30 year old journalist niece has never made more the 30K per year. Out here on the east coast that’s poverty wages. She just moved in with us while she looks for something in Philly! George Luis Borges once told me the reward is in the doing. He said it in Spanish but you get my point.

I’m a full time teacher in a secondary (ages 11 – 18) boarding school, which means that once you add all the teaching time to the planning, preparation and marking, and then to the boarding duties I’m working about a 50+ hour week.

With half an hour to spare in front of my computer when I am lacking inspiration for writing schemes of work, or updating our department website, or designing new wall displays, I will knock out the occasional review on Urbis and maybe surf the forums a little.

At 11pm each night I switch on my laptop and do a bit of writing, although an hour isn’t really enough time to really get stuck in so I’m only managing about 2,000 words a week.

The pay off? Next week I begin my 7 week summer holiday.

Novel? Here I come! Woo hoooo!

I do a lot of writing on my lunch hour in my handy-dandy notebook between bites, and then in my car if I get to the office early, etc. Then when I go home at night, I just type it, make changes, etc.

But I will still go weeks without getting much done. That’s the nature of the beast sometimes.

See that post in July? Did I write a novel during that 7 weeks? Did I hell. And now that I am struggling to keep up with reviews and chapter in this novel workshop I’m in, I curse those squandered weeks.

I blame digital TV. It is a black hole of imagination. An inspiration and original thought wet blanket.