Authors - what’s your day job?

[CakeRage]

I’m at a bit of a crossroads in my career at the moment and am just wondering what the authors on here do for work.

You don’t need to tell me the actual job if it’ll out you. But do you work full or part time, or are you lucky enough to make a full-time living from your books? If you do work, do you put as much of yourself into your work as you do into your writing, or does it just pay the bills? Are you a writer in another capacity, or is your day job totally different?

Just asking out of pure curiosity while I think about my options. Plus it’s something to think about other than agents!

I write fiction full-time.

It looks very much like any other office type of job, but without the predictable salary and benefits. There's no waiting for the muse nonsense either. This is how I make money, so the words have to be written no matter how uninspired I'm feeling.

And I self-publish, so everything is down to me. There are positives and negatives to that.

But working in my pyjamas is a definite plus point.

Watching with interest as writing full time has always been my dream but novel writing has always felt so out of reach for me. At the moment I get by with freelance copywriting and a part time day job in administration. On a very low salary with both combined but I dream of the day when I have the time and inspiration to write that book!

I dream of the day when I have the time and inspiration to write that book!

You probably don’t need as much time as you think. I wrote my book over 2 months, just writing for about 2 hours per day, so even if you could find an hour a day or even less you could still reasonably have it done in 6 months. The inspiration is more of a problem though. That took me twenty years!

I was working a 40 hour week until recently, copywriting and managing a team, and although I was good at it, I hated it, and I felt like it numbed my creativity a lot. I still had to be creative, but in a soul-destroying kind of way, if you know what I mean?

I just don’t know if it would be better to do something totally different as a day job and keep all my imagination for me.

I work in the literary field, running a journal, and editing fiction, non-fiction and work in translation.

I work in education part time plus freelance. I've tried all kinds of combinations and this is the best yet, if not the most lucrative. It's flexible and quite active, meeting people, so balances the solitary side of writing nicely. I can up or down my hours as needed, and even after a 10 hour day I have enough left in the tank to write/edit if I need to.

I work full time as an engineer and wrote early mornings/ lunch breaks/ weekends.

I just handed my notice in at work, so as of next month I'm a full time writer.

My plan is to do nightshift, as thats what I do at the weekend and it's worked best so far for word count. I write in a "throwaway" genre so need to have a high output to keep up with demand.

I’m self-employed, doing translation and editing jobs. I want more work then when I get it I moan that I haven’t got time/headspace to write.

I agree with Cake Rage though, just get it done in what time you can grab for yourself. But never, EVER wait for inspiration! Just get something down even it’s total shite. Then at least you’ve got something you can work with.