What Your Day Job Brings to Your Writing (and vice versa)

Yes, you can work a day job and be a creative writer. 

Once, during a job interview, an interviewer confessed that she had google-ed me.

Then, she asked me if, as a creative writer, I actually had time for any other work—including that job to which I was applying.

This wasn’t friendly small talk between two just-met strangers.

Instead, everything about this woman told me that she believed I was incapable and capable of short changing the part of my life that mattered (day job) to feed the other (creative writing and teaching).

This woman couldn’t have been rude-er. She couldn’t have been wrong-er.

On Labor Day: I’m A Writer with a Day Job

Hasn’t it happened to you? You’re so gob-smacked by a stranger’s question that, at best, you respond with something evasive or inadequate.

Then, hours or days afterward, when the cocktail party or the job interview is all over, you think of all those clever things you could or should have said.

After that interview, here’s what I would have said: For the past 25 or more years, it’s because I work a busy day job that I can be a creative writer. And vice versa.

I would have also mentioned that being creative writers makes us empathetic colleagues and how good empathy makes for good workplaces. Also, for centuries, big and medium-name creative writers have worked in all sorts of roles and industries and jobs.

So today, on Labor Day, if you’re a writer with a day job, let me assure you that your writing and your job don’t have to compete or detract from each other.

What a Day Job Brings to Our Writing

Money:  A recent Authors Guild study of $5,000+ creative writers (memoir, fiction, essays, poetry, drama et al) showed that, based on book sales alone, writers make approximately $3,000 per year. If you’ve figured out a way to live on that, good for you! But collection agencies make very, very poor writing mentors. Without a roof over your head and food in your fridge, you will not write.

Creative freedom:  When the bills are paid, we are not as susceptible to the fads and fashions of the publishing industry. We can say ‘no’ to those freelance gigs that won’t augment our portfolios, build our Curriculum Vitae and that will probably yield more headaches than fiscal stability. When the bills are paid, we can write what really matters to us.

Time and project management: A day job gives us dual experience in (a) meeting set deadlines and (b) planning and managing a roster of projects. Both of these skills will support and advance the creative life.

Tenacity: There really are no free lunches. So the tenacity and problem-solving skills we learn and practice at work carry over into our writing lives. A writing project has stalled? An editor or agent is ghosting? We need to be good at defusing disagreements, setting next steps and developing a workable contingency plan.

So wherever you work, this Labor Day, I hope you’re writing. Also, I hope you’ll take a moment to be grateful for what your day job gives you and, just as important, what it gives to your writing.

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My writing workshop, “Words after Work” is for writers who also work a day job. Or see all my writers tips posts and writing workshops at my author website. Or check out my how-to writing book, “Writer with a Day Job” (Penguin Random House).