How to Be a Writer - Part IV (Managing the Day Job)

Today, in Part IV of our series about how to be a writer, we're going to discuss one of the most hated aspects of being a creative of any type: The day job. I know, we've all been fed the image of the professional writer who flies off to make movies of his work and has a huge mansion and a private plane and gobs of money that would make Scrooge McDuck envious, but that's not how it actually works for the vast majority of us.

Of the thousands of writers in the world today, according to many sources, only about 300 of them can actually make a living at it. Think about that for a moment. Judging by the numbers of attendees at writers conventions that I go to, that's like one out of every thousand or so. Or more. So what chance to do you have? Same as anyone else, I imagine. And, while it's noble to say "I will be the exception!" and go whole-hog into it without a net, most folks have to do things like pay rent (and the electricity bill for your laptop from part one of this series) and like to do silly things like eat. So what does that mean? You need the dreaded day job.

I've been fortunate my entire working life in that I've worked (with very minor breaks) in university settings. Currently, I work for Texas State University and Seton Hill University. Why? Because they give the predictability of a steady schedule, health insurance, paid vacation, a retirement plan, etc. But working for a university is just not an option for some folks (trust me, I know how lucky I am). So how do you navigate both careers at the same time? The key, of course, is planning.

If you work hourly, let's say retail, without a fixed schedule, you need to make sure you take time for your writing career. It may not be every day, but you need to make it a priority in your life. For example, let's say you work the morning shift (8am - 5pm) M-W-F. That means that on M-W-F, you need to carve out a block of time when you get home to do your writing. T-TH, you have all day. Does that mean you can just write whenever? Theoretically, yes, but I find it better when I have a set schedule. That's me, though. What if you work mornings one day, evenings the next? Besides trying to find a new job, the same thing applies. You need to carve out a time when you can work. Wake up early to get it done. I don't recommend staying up until all hours because that becomes a vicious cycle of self-abuse. Since I work from 7:30am to 4:30pm every weekday, my writing schedule is easy. I get home at around 5 or 5:15pm every day, and I decompress for about thirty minutes (pet my dogs, sit on my porch), then I eat dinner. After dinner, I go into my office and bang away until I get 1000 words written (more on that in a future blog).  On weekends, I actually still do work, but I also take time out to be with friends and family, pet my dogs and ride my motorcycle.

The point is, I know it seems impossible, but it isn't. With planning, you can accomplish juggling the two careers. It's difficult, and it sucks, but only until you get used to it as your "new normal." Once you figure out the whole scheduling thing, it becomes a question of discipline and drive. Think of it like this: If you want to lose weight, there's a very simple calculus for doing so - Eat right and exercise. Every now and again, you have a "cheat day" where you can eat carbs or pizza or whatever, but then you have to have the drive to get back in the gym and hit it hard. Writing is the same way. You want to write that novel? You have to put in the time. You have to set a routine. It's okay to take a day off every now and again, but once that day off is done, get back into your writing gym and hit it hard.

A few other tips:

• Do not write at work on work-owned equipment - Check your contract, if you have one. Chances are, anything written on company-owned equipment becomes owned by the company, and that includes your novel.  Dropbox is a great thing, but if you put it on your work computer to access your work, then guess what. Everything in your dropbox could be argued to become company property as well. Want to take the guesswork out? Just don't do it 
• Do keep a notebook at work - You don't need to write the whole plot line, but keep a notebook and a pen handy and make notes when you get ideas. I keep a pocket-sized composition book in my pocket when I'm at work, and it's full of random little notes that wind up in my books later. 
• Read on breaks - Part of being a writer is reading. It's a thing that we all do, and it's a way to continually stay sharp in our genre and take ideas from other genres. On your lunch break, have a seat, eat your lunch, and read a chapter in a book. It's good for a brain break. 
• Post your schedule - I don't just mean your work schedule, but also your work schedule. Put it on your refrigerator. 8am - 5pm, work. 7pm - 9pm, writing. Post it so you and everyone else you live with can see it. 
• Don't talk about the book you're writing to just everyone at work - Sure, if you have a friend at work, that's great. But people don't want to hear about what book you're writing. Especially ad-nausium if you're just now writing it. From experience, depending on where you work, mentioning that you're a hopeful writer will get you a combination of snide comments, pithy nicknames, and outright jeers. 
• Do tell folks when it gets picked up - Folks love to pick up books by people they know. Just be ready to educate people on what it's really like to be a writer (i.e. my first book got picked up and, no, I'm not a bazillionaire yet).
• Join a writers organization - Seriously, whatever genre you write in, there's an org for it. Horror? Join the HWA. Romance, RWA. Sci-Fi/Fantasy? Join SFWA. Why? Because these organizations are there to help their members succeed. Some even offer health insurance discounts. No kidding. 

Being a writer with a day-job (full or part time) is manageable. It's a pain, but manageable. The hardest part is to never let your day-job-self crush the ambition of the writer-self. With discipline, determination, and planning, you can do this.

And one more thing... This image made me think of this entry.

Amen.

Next time, we talk about making routines and setting goals.

Until then, write on!

SAJ

Chairs

While mentoring young writers, I often come across similar issues.  One of my favorites is when the writer in question has a brilliant imagination, but clearly hasn't thought things through enough.  I teach a module called "Evolution of the Species" in which we discuss this type of issue, but here' i'd like to focus on a small problem that turned huge pretty quick as an illustration. 

For the purposes of this exercise, let's assume you're a writer.  

Your genre is fantasy (or "high fantasy").  You've created a race of people who have wings.  You have a gift of description that leaves your readers breathless with the beautiful images of purple feathers and soft collars of down.  In fact, this race is so ancient that you have no real reason to create a complete backstory for them because they "have always been."

Submitted without comment...

Then one sits in a chair. 

Now, for a moment, lets ignore all the other issues this world has, such as your winged people living in houses.  Let's just focus on that one detail for a moment. 

In your home, you have chairs.  No, really.  Don't believe me?  Go look.  I'll wait.  See?  Told you.  Now, in your description of these chairs, you go on and on about highly decorated ornate backs of wood and employ your gift of descriptive imagery to its full extent.  The chairs in your world are beautiful and realistic to all the readers.  

Pictured:  Your character's chair.

They're also wrong.  Here's why. 

Follow my thought process here.  Intelligent species first begin designing object to use out of utilitarian need.  We design things that fit our bodies, and if it doesn't, then why on any world would we create them?  Do you see the problem yet?  Okay... Here it is:  If your character, which you describe as the size of a roughly good sized human, has wings large enough to bear him aloft in accordance with the laws of physics, he could not physically sit in a chair because he would break his wings.

"Dammit!  This is why we can't have nice things!"

The same thing applies to every aspect of this new world in which the dominant species has a twelve-foot wing span.  So now it becomes your job as a writer to build your world backward, so you can see what would've been built how, and why.  A species with a twelve-foot wing span would not, for example ever build anything that would necessitate the crushing of one's own wings.  In fact, if you take into account physical limitations, this particular species would, likely, have invented the bar stool long before it ever invented something as obviously meant for torture as a "chair."

See?  No backs, no wing crushings.

Now apply this to other areas.  For example, a "bedroom."  What's the first thing you like to do when you wake up in the morning?  Stretch, right?  Now take a good look at your bedroom.  Hard walls, low ceilings, etc.  If you had a twelve-foot wingspan, would you ever be caught inside something like that?  Chances are, no.  Chances are, it would be torturous for you.  Small windows, roads, vehicles... None of it would even exist in a world where the dominant species had wings.  Hell, roads might not even exist. 

The point is this:  You need to think it through.  Build your world from the bottom up with the dominant species in mind.  There's a brilliant joke that the late great Douglas Adams wrote in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy which involves a multi-limbed creature that was unique in the universe in that it invented underarm deodorant before it discovered the wheel.  Necessity.  It's why we create things.  Your species would do the same. 

When you build a world, start with your species.  Then ask yourself a series of questions:

• What are its needs?
• What are its limitations?
• How are they like me?
• How are they dissimilar?

Make good choices for your characters and make your world more believable.  I don't mean make your readers think the world is real, but at least make them wonder at the possibility.  Otherwise, you have creatures who are doing incredibly uncomfortable things for their anatomy.  Like sitting in chairs. 

Things I'm Tired of Seeing

I recently returned from Seton Hill University (where I teach in their MFA Writing Popular Fiction program...  Go look it up), and the powers that be handed down a topic of conversation.

What are you tired of seeing in your genre?

It's actually a very complex question that deserves a great deal of examination.  No matter your genre, there are tropes, cliches, overused situations and rip-offs that drive writers and readers up a wall.  If you are writing, it is your responsibility to try to constantly improve, to elevate the genre, if you will.  So, taking a cue from Rob Hart in his blog-post, I thought I might share ten things that make me kitten-punching angry when I read them for the millionth time.

10.  Weak Female Characters - Women that "need" a man, women that are incapable of making decisions on their own, and women that exist for no other reason than to be a damsel in distress, lead me to ask one question of the writers who create them:  Where the hell do you people live?  I'm in Texas, and women here don't act like that!  Point me to the city of simpering gyno-Americans and let me open up a Kajukenbo school there!  Please!  Look, when you create a character, you want that character to be real, right?  You want people to resonate with them?  You want them to be loved?  Maybe?  The women I've always found attractive, or even mildly interesting, have never been the "oops-I-fell-down-please-help-me" type.  They've been the "oh-no-he-DIDN'T" type that has opinions,  strength, and enough intelligence to accomplish her goals.

9.  Sex for the Sake of Sex - Look, I'm not a prude.  Really.  But if your manuscript reads like the plot to every bad porno that's out there, you're doing something wrong.  Sure, it's fine to have your characters bonk like rabid weasels.  But in your book, there has to be a reason for it.  It should advance the plot.  It should define the character.  It should not be "Well, I haven't put a graphic description of someone's wang in for about fifty pages..."  Even in erotica, the sex should do something to advance the story or character.

8.  Magic Without Consequence - Magic, by definition, is the manipulation of energy to influence an outcome.  That's the truncated version, and I don't feel like typing the whole thing when I'm ranting, so go with me.  That energy has to come from somewhere, right?  I mean, Einstein said so, right?  So that means it has to come from either an outside source or the user's body.  If it's from the body, that energy has to be generated by the consumption of food, otherwise the body will wither and die, so that character is going to be hungry all the time.  If it's outside, where's it coming from?  The plants?  Okay, they'll wither and die.  Gods?  Better believe they'll want something in return.  And if you're directing the energy through the character's body, how much energy can that body handle without going into "HOLY-SHIT-I'M-ON-FIRE!!!" mode?  Think these things through, people.  Please.

7.  "The Chosen One" - If I had a nickel for every story I've read (both published and not-yet published) where some kid is revealed to be the SAVIOR OF THE WORLD! (cue music) who has been hidden in plain sight for fifteen or so years, I'd have a rather large sack of nickels.  Please, people, I know it's a time-honored storyline, but it's been beaten bloody lately.  Let is rest for, let's say, ten years?  Fifteen?  That might be nice.

6.  Monsters who Aren't Monsters Anymore - Quick as you can, think of the last time you've been really scared by a zombie?  Or a vampire?  Or a werewolf?  Sorry, but we (I'm in America, BTW) just can't seem to have monsters that are, you know actual monsters anymore.  We have to make them fluffy.  We have to make them brooding and sympathetic.  We have to take away what made them scary in the first place and make them emo-kids or whining little snots that deserve our contempt and not the legions of lovesick sparkle-pants that flock to see their movies.  How 'bout this:  What about a monster that is (gasp) evil?  That is scary?  Would that be so bad?

5.  Chisel-Chest - You know damned well who I'm talking about.  The perfect hero.  The guy.  Former special ops, long flowing hair, damaged with a good heart, strong jaw and a body made of rock-hard granite just waiting for a squishy female (see number 10) to come and drill through to his ooey-gooey center of love and creamy nugat.  BLECH.  How about a real person?  Real people are overweight, out of shape, have bad hair and skin, and are constantly being told they're not good enough by mainstream media.  Why contribute to that problem?

4.  Poor Research - Guys and Gals, if you rely on what you see in movies and/television to tell you how things work, news flash:  You're wrong.  Your writing will show it, and people will point and laugh.  Your book will become the butt of every literary joke in the world.  For example, in an enclosed apartment, a man fires a gun three times, then whispers to his partner "you go around back..."  Guess what?  If he whispers, his partner will never hear him because guns are really freaking loud.  Espeically in an enclosed space.  Wanna know about a particular religion so you don't sound like a bigoted schmuck (or ignorant)?  Read a book.  Do some research.  Talk to people who know the subject.

3.  Ultra-Boob - Related to Chisel-Chest, Ultra-Boob is the female version.  Spunky, gorgeous, vivacious, always described as under 5'5," under 110 lbs, and able to beat the snot out of a mountain troll with nothing but high-heels and attitude.  Really?  Your (insert angry stereotype minority heritage that writers are constantly trying to prove how cool they are by perpetuating it) blood makes you more than a match for something twice your height and six times your weight?  Yeah, right.  Sorry, but it reminds me of one of those annoying yip-dogs that people all hate, but no one kicks because it wouldn't be worth the effort.  Yes, we all know she's a joke, and that one good backhand by an ogre would send her crumpling (possibly with internal hemmoraging and/or a mild case of death), but no one does it because... well, why?  What would be the point?  Writers, this person is annoying in real life and doesn't come across as a "strong female character."  She comes across as a bitch.

2.  M-Night-Shayammalammadingdong Endings - The twist.  Lead the reader through the whole book, and then, in the last ten pages, (gasp) he was the bad guy all along!  Or (gasp) it was all a dream! Or (gasp) insert-your-annoying-plot-twist-of-choice!  It's lazy.  It's lying to the reader.  It betrays the reader's trust and you need to form that trust relationship with the reader so he or she will continue on your journey of insanity.

1.  Vampires (and, to a lesser extent, Zombies) - Seriously.  Stop it.

Bonus:  The Mash-Up - We've all played the drunken game of "What book would be made better with zombies/vampires/leprechauns/smurfs," and for a while it was amusing.  Now it's old and played out and, really, did we need a version of "Moby Dick" in which the whale was white because it was an undead zombie whale?

So that's my list.  Feel free to share yours in the comments.

Thanks for reading.