Writer with a Day Job

As the earnings from writing can be temperamental – sometimes I can go months without making any money – and call me crazy, I like to be able to afford food, it meant the first task in my forage outside of my writing cave was to find a day job.

Constant, reliable earnings work well as a buffer, and it’s taken the pressure off the desperation that comes with writing for money. Don’t get me wrong, writer is still my chosen career, but I found that when money was my focus, my imagination was blocked, and writing became impossible. The same with having limited time. It gives me a schedule to work to, rather than endless minutes of staring at a blank, white screen, wondering what to put on down followed by hours of procrastination and extra walks for the dog.

Now, I work in the mornings and then I go home in the afternoons and I view it like going to a second job. When I get home, I have some lunch and then I pull out my schedule of deadlines and promotion, and I’m free to work for the rest of the day. And here’s the beauty of being a single woman…It doesn’t matter if I write the night through because there’s no one to object.

Thus, it brings us to another benefit of having a day job while building a creative career. Getting out the house and interacting with people! I’m an introvert by nature and so hiding away in my house comes easily to me. What I find difficult is socialising. I could happily spend months watching Netflix in my pjs, with my laptop open in front of me, but that circles around to missing out on life, and I’m trying to change that.

Being creative means ambition looks different on us. We may no throw on a power suit, mix with professionals and climb our way up a corporate ladder. A lot of the time it means spending hours alone, creating, existing in our own imaginations, and then when we do step into the real world it can be jarring, but we are aiming for something. Just because we procrastinate doesn’t mean we’re not motivated. I’m ambitious. I want to be a writer, and I want to be a successful one. It is my career priority.

Which is why I look for the silver lining of not being able to spend my workday doing nothing but writing. It’s not a realistic possibility for me right now. I’m a single woman trying to get back on my feet after cancer and redundancy which means the reliable income personally gives me peace of mind. My natural state is solitude, and it’s a constant battle to stop myself from giving in and hiding away. It doesn’t mean I’m not motivated. I’m ambitious. I want to be a writer, and I want to be a successful one. It is my career priority, but until I hit the payload with writing, my day job is integral to my writing.