Don't Quit Your Day Job

A little meditation on working (and playing) for a living.

Image: kirill_makes_pics, via pixabay.com

  Lately, I find myself troubled by heretical thoughts. Since I first started writing, it had been a stretch goal of mine to become good enough at the craft to make a living at it. This ambition afflicts many (most? all?) scribblers, whether admitted or not. Presumably, we enjoy writing. Otherwise, why take up the cursed habit in the first place? As the saying goes, do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. So logically, if you enjoy writing then getting paid to do just that and only that must be perfect. Right?

  I wonder if that is the case.

  The first and obvious drawback is that if you make writing your job, dragging words from your head and stitching them to the page might become just that; A job. A chore, A soul-destroying, mind-numbing grind you eventually come to dread. Maybe, but probably not. Most writers have stories ricocheting about in their heads, desperately seeking a way out. Birthing those stories in a readable form might be painful, but not something many can walk away from once experienced a time or two.

  Two aspects worry me. First, even if the enthusiasm for writing survives writing for a living, the money is going to start to influence your writing. In order to make a living writing, you have to write not just well enough to sell, but you have to churn out what sells. If that coincides with what you want to write, great. If not, compromises must be made. And the writer is likely to end up conceding more in that negotiation than the reader. Who can honestly just go find another author to read. If all of your money comes from writing, you are a wage-slave to the market. Brutal, but true.

  Do not get me wrong. I have absolutely nothing against money from a philosophical, moral, or political perspective. Reliable sources report that money makes the world go round. And personal observation supports that assertion. Besides, no matter how much of the stuff I have, it has been empirically determined that uses can always be found for more. Money can’t buy happiness, but a sufficient supply will finance a reasonable simulation thereof.

  This is not a binary choice, however; pure art and poverty vs prosperity and shlock. An entire spectrum lay between hack writer and pretentious, literary artiste, who won’t soil his hands or craft with filthy lucre. Most can more easily find a comfortable balance point along that scale if paying the mortgage doesn’t depend upon what can be hammered out of the keyboard.

  What I’m suggesting is, maybe don’t quit your day job even if you can. Not only does a separate income offer you some degree of independence from the demands of the reader, it also provides a place of refuge from staring at a screen all day, a voracious screen howling to be filled with words. Sure, a day job will take time away from writing. Perhaps that is time you need to spend away from the keyboard.

  Second, and maybe more important, a life away from writing keep you saner, and probably improves your writing in the long run. Writers live inside their own heads for long stretches. Isolation is necessary to work through plots and twists, and simply to accomplish the typing. There are dangers in this. It’s easy to lose touch with reality because you’re immersed in the unreal, the fictional.

  Beyond the demands of mental health, working supplies the writer with raw material. Depending on the job, you are getting paid to interact with a random sequence of other human beings. The smart thing to do is pay attention to that resource. By that I mean ruthlessly strip mine it for story ideas and characters. A number of my former coworkers have found their way into my short stories and novels. With their consent, I hasten to add. Which cuts down on recrimination, acrimony and lawsuits (knock wood). This practice is known as Tuckerization, pioneered by science fiction writer Wilson Tucker, who dragooned his friends and acquaintances into literary servitude. Tucker was merely continuing a tradition indulged in by Michelangelo, who reportedly painted the faces of people he knew into scenes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. People Michelangelo didn’t like found themselves depicted as on the way to hell in The Last Judgement fresco.

  Another important consideration is the real-world experience working supplies. I have written a number of stories set in military situations, all based upon and inspired by reading what military people have written. I’ve never served, and no matter how well I might write, my work in that regard will always lack the ring of personal experience anyone who has can provide. Let alone those who have served in combat. I might come close, but no cigar.

  I have, however, worked for decades in industry, resolving the contrary aims of different parts of the same company, suffering under the capricious whims of foolish management. That alone is a fabulously rich vein of story ideas. Why deny yourself a minute of it? Be warned, though. You will have to change names and localities to protect the not-so-innocent, and avoid unnecessarily enriching lawyers. Theirs and yours.

  Of course, all of this begs the question. Before retirement and back in the days when I found it necessary to slap an alarm clock every morning in order to continue receiving a steady paycheck, would I have quit my day job and written for a living? Assuming it was financially feasible. You’re darned right I would have. In a New York minute. Because, who the hell ever follows their own advice?