Writing Despite the Day Job
Selling books is hard. Selling your own books... much harder, especially if you're from the era taught not to blow your own horn (lest one be called an egotistical little b-word).
These days, you can write and publish your own books pretty much for the cost of a computer to upload them. If you want to do it right, of course, you'll hire an editor to catch those pesky mistakes that jolt the reader and a cover artist to get readers to even look at your book in the first place.
But the hardest thing I've come across yet is writing when you have a day job.
I used to do it. My first two books were written when I was a consultant. But my current employment, while I started out as junior and so not very important (and so protected from getting called into a critical!! BIG-BIG-BIG problem meeting at 5pm) has changed. Half my team has since left and I've had the misfortune to become more important at work.
So. No writing between 7am and 5pm. Too exhausted after to do more than make dinner and collapse. Weekends spent catching up on all the home and body maintenance I don't have time to do during the week. Vacations spent visiting relatives.
What can you do?
- When you collapse...how about reading a book instead of watching TV? Not every night, but every little bit helps keep the narrative wheels greased.
- How about saving a couple days PTO for just yourself? Especially this time of year, when you're thinking about the days to you have to use or lose, but before the holiday crunch sets in?
- If you commute, the easy straights are good times to do some story planning or work out small knots. Not when conditions are hazardous, though!
- If you don't commute to work, how about when you commute to sleep? Can you lure yourself to slumberland by thinking on character, plot, or pacing?
Notice what I haven't recommended. Honestly, some posts are just trying to hand us death by guilt or annihilate us by overwork.
- Get up an hour earlier and write?? Seriously? If you like to get up early because the house is quiet, that's great! But don't alter your routine so much that it makes you sick.
- Stay up an hour later and write?? Again, if you're a night owl and up anyway, sure, take advantage as long as it doesn't burn you out.
- Dictate your book while you're on the treadmill (or other exercise)?? Hey, if it's something you can do, I applaud you! It's already hard enough for me to get on that treadmill. I need a bit of a reward to do it (I do read while walking), not babbling some stream of consciousness that then takes me half an hour to re-listen to and digest and which I could distill to a sentence in one minute if I were sitting and writing.
What do you do for your writing despite the day job? What writing-life-hacks backfire big time? Let me know!
Published since 2009, over the years I've accumulated various items of writing wisdom. The Third Tuesday Writing Tidbit showcases these items in no particular order. Click here to see all 3T Tidbits.
