can we talk about "day jobs" and "writing life"

Willow72 said:

Is anyone finding their day job and writing life are ever in conflict?

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In some professional circles, any time spent on a 'hobby' is time not spent on the job. Until I retired, I kept mum about my writing attempts. On the other hand, I hadn't reached the point of publication at that time.

An unpleasant story:

I knew an erotic romance writer who worked in a corporate office. The office Born-Again googled her and discovered her several published works. The B-A outed her in front of the entire office, as well as her boss. She had to promise to stop writing to keep her job.

I have the type of office jobs that most writers would love. I open mail and process online faxes, transfer them to personal files, blah blah. There are days when the number of faxes is huge and then there are days when there are a handful every hour. I can sometimes spend an hour writing my stories at my desk during these dry spells when I have nothing else to do.

So my work life does not affect me at all. At the end of the day I have usually managed to write between 400 and 700 words at work which is enough for me. I come home, copy and paste it into my story, and then spend the rest of the night relaxing. It is university that really affects me.

Last year I did a web design class. I had no idea how to even work a Mac computer, yet alone type in HTML code, so I spent most of last semister stressed, angry, crying, and staying up to 10pm each night after work trying to make my website work. I got a real high grade in the end. I don't know how I managed that fluke. My writing suffered though. I was too stressed with uni to even think about focusing on it.

Ah, a topic near and dear to my heart.

My day job is running a marketing and brand strategy firm that I co-own, which means the normal long hours and stresses facing an entrepreneur. That said, writing is a priority and I'm lucky enough to have a very understanding business partner who gets that I am building my writing career.

Something I haven't seen really discussed here is that now that my book is published, I feel like I have three jobs instead of the old day-job/by night dichotomy. Now I get to work at my day job, be a writer who produces, and be an Author who markets and promotes her work while looking after her literary career.

Some days this seems easy-peasy. On others, it makes me want to crawl into the nearest cave and die. For me, writing is the hardest part. Promotion is very time-sensitive and concrete, as is the day job stuff, but writing falls by the wayside unless I am very rigorous about goals, tracking, self-imposed deadlines, and fun stuff like general discipline.

Another complicating factor (I know, I'm a special snowflake): my day job involves a LOT of writing. Sometimes it can be hard to switch gears, but I find that having a few rituals around my writing and being willing to put down the day work in favor of my dreams works wonders.

Thanks everyone for your input; I'm really enjoying this thread!

dangerousbill said:

In some professional circles, any time spent on a 'hobby' is time not spent on the job. Until I retired, I kept mum about my writing attempts. On the other hand, I hadn't reached the point of publication at that time.

An unpleasant story:

I knew an erotic romance writer who worked in a corporate office. The office Born-Again googled her and discovered her several published works. The B-A outed her in front of the entire office, as well as her boss. She had to promise to stop writing to keep her job.

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I hope she sued their ass. If that ever happened to me I would chuck the biggest shit storm of all time and ask what right they had to tell me what I could do in my spare time.

I work for the government, but my writing is fiction, so there's no conflict there. Besides, I filled out Form 7995, "Outside Employment or Business Activity Request," so they're cool with it.

Atlantis said:

I hope she sued their ass. If that ever happened to me I would chuck the biggest shit storm of all time and ask what right they had to tell me what I could do in my spare time.

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I agree, emotionally. Practically, I have always lived in what are euphemistically known as "right to work" states, which basically means you can be fired for any reason at any time. Also, some contracts have a morals clause.

Heck, I have a potential client right now whose contract has boilerplate stating that I will not do anything that might embarrass the company while I'm a contractor. Clearly, I am not going to sign anything with that kind of boilerplate, but I know people who sign such things under the mistaken impression that the employee is the one who gets to define "embarrassing." Or "moral."

Atlantis said:

I hope she sued their ass. If that ever happened to me I would chuck the biggest shit storm of all time and ask what right they had to tell me what I could do in my spare time.

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KathleenD said:

I agree, emotionally. Practically, I have always lived in what are euphemistically known as "right to work" states, which basically means you can be fired for any reason at any time. Also, some contracts have a morals clause.

Heck, I have a potential client right now whose contract has boilerplate stating that I will not do anything that might embarrass the company while I'm a contractor. Clearly, I am not going to sign anything with that kind of boilerplate, but I know people who sign such things under the mistaken impression that the employee is the one who gets to define "embarrassing." Or "moral."

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I had a similar but even more ridiculous experience with a work-for-hire art job in which the client expected me to agree that I would never do anything to embarrass them EVER, which would have given them the right to censor my art career. When I told them I wouldn't accept that clause for that reason, they just blinked at me uncomprehendingly. I didn't take that job, of course.

I've lived in "right to work" states, too, and the funny thing about that is they seem to think that state law trumps federal law in the US, which it doesn't. Workers need to know what their rights really are and enforce them. Of course, with "employment at will" they can still fire you without giving any reason at all. Thus it strikes me as the pinnacle of stupid for an employer to threaten an employee for such a shaky reason, when they could just (unfairly) off load them for no reason at all. The minute they cite a reason, however, before or after the fact, they create trouble for themselves.

I also have a highly visible gov't job.

I disclosed the writing at the job interview.

If I get on a panel at a con I clear it with my boss.

He understands that I sometimes write during my lunch hour. And he sometimes asks how its going.

Just as I am circumspect about what I write about, I'm careful about what I blog about, and what I post online about.

But yeah, full disclosure at the beginning is the ONLY way to go to avoid conflict. And that way, you're dealing with it before it blows up in your face.

That said, I don't write horror. I don't write legal fiction (am a lawyer) and I don't write erotica. If I did, then I think a pen name would be appropriate to keep the two separate, but since I don't write any of those, I really don't see a conflict between the two.

Writing and the Job

I am going to take a slightly different tack here by saying that my job makes my writing easier. I run a literary website that takes up a lot of my free time. I write the weekly editor's letter (which involves research for several parts), and I also share responsibility for writing a bi-weekly column on bookmarks.

I work a full-time administrative job in higher education. Frankly, it's a dull job. I don't care about it, but I am committed to turning out excellent work while there because my ethics and values would allow me to do nothing less. And the truth is I don't much mind the fact that it's boring for two reasons: (1) it provides life security in the form of a steady paycheck and fabulous medical, vision, dental, vacation, sick time, and other benefits so I can concentrate on my passion without interruption, and (2) the work doesn't use up any of my creative energy so I have it all for my writing and editing.

ETA: The dean who oversees the department knows about my website and even, at the last IT holiday party, recommended it to a few people.

My writing and day job (well, it was usually 4pm to midnight) often collided. But it was mostly when they switched me to the "work whenever we want you to" so when I had to get up for 5 AM some days, 8 PM other days, and work 11 hours days, I just couldn't get the time to write.

erinbee said:

Something I haven't seen really discussed here is that now that my book is published, I feel like I have three jobs instead of the old day-job/by night dichotomy. Now I get to work at my day job, be a writer who produces, and be an Author who markets and promotes her work while looking after her literary career.

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I'm starting to feel that way, and I'm still a year away from publication. Deadlines looming, conventions to attend, maybe interviews...

I don't have any day-job/writing conflict, thankfully, as I write under my married name and am known by my maiden name at work (and publish scientific papers under it). Also, since I work on a campus full of geeks, I'll probably get more kudos than brickbats for writing fantasy than I would in most other jobs!

Well, I say there's no conflict - at the moment I'm finding it very hard focusing on day-job tasks because of all the exciting developments on the writing side. I'm hoping that once that settles down, I'll get my programming mojo back

My other plan is to cut back on my working hours if I can swing it - keep enough of a day-job to pay the mortgage and other financial commitments, but with a bit more time for writing.

I work the third shift because I am a vicious creature during the day. I don't think I could produce the output that I do if my job was early in the morning.


My job doesn't present any real problems. I would say that it helps my writing because my coworkers are a colorful bunch!

When I was an events manager and worked during the day, I hardly got any writing done. Fighting through rush-hour traffic, full-on work for 8 or more hours, then fighting r-h traffic back left me too exhausted to pull anything good out of the creative bag. I will forever regret that I had just started that job when I got my internship as a TV writer.

Now I'm on afternoon-to-nights, down the road from where I live, and just had my days cut, so loads of writing.

My job will give me loads of contacts once I'm finished with the book. A news-reader, who is a member at the club, has invited me to her book launch. Though I bet she'd forgotten by now. I've met an agent who said he'd be honoured to have a look when I'm done. So though I hate the job and am now really poor, with the cuts, I think it'll stand me in great stead in the end.

I am an appellate attorney so I research, write, and deal with clients all day. Most of the time I have to take work home with me and I'm exhausted when I finally take off my lawyer hat for the day. That makes it really really really tough to squeeze out another hour or so to write fiction. I never feel like I get anything done on my fiction and it can be super duper frustrating. Sometimes I just give up for a while, but then I eventually come back. I wish I could spend all day writing what I want, but I have to pay the bills.

Willow72 said:

Newb here, hoping it's not been done like dinner, but curious about an issue I'm hoping you kind folks can elaborate on.

Is anyone finding their day job and writing life are ever in conflict?

I ask this because it's getting trickier for me. My day job involves working for the government in a pretty regimented role. My writing life is becoming more and more high profile, and while I absolutely never, ever comment publicly on my day job, I do see a day coming where I may need to stop leading parallel lives and just choose one path (the writing one, obviously!)

It's a little late for a pen name.

Thanks for your thoughts,

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I work in government too, and I have to say that I've never found my job really conflicts with my writing. Obviously I have to be a little careful about what I write under my real name, and obviously I don't publish anything under my own name that would compromise my reputation in my day job.

I don't generally use a pen name, and honestly I've never really found it to be an issue because most people I work with do not know I write, and I have a pretty common name, so even if someone DID come across something I had written, chances are it would never even enter into their head that we were the same person, so I generally don't worry about it.

I don't see a time when I would have to choose between the two, and even if there was, anyone trying to make me choose would have a fight on their hands.