A day job

I'm in the same boat kinda. I'm a college student who wants to make a living at writng, but is realistic. LOL. How about getting a job w/a magazine or newspaper? I'd like to get an MFA honestly, but those are for personal reasons.

I work in what is basically data entry - it's a job that doesn't make me stand on my feet, work in a fast food restaurant or sales, and I'm able to keep my typing skills up to snuff for those long evenings of writing when I get home. It's becoming a little tough on the old hands, but it pays the bills and keeps me free from "take home work". Just a thought...

WVWG

Also in this boat. We get enough people we can have a party.

I will have a business degree when I graduate. Nothing whatsoever relating to fiction. I also have to get a good job because I am married and have a household to co-support. I figure I get the job and squeeze writing in when I can.

If I thought I could be successfully supporting myself writing soon enough, I would keep the job now as a 3rd shift server and go full-time with it. But, I don't, so I won't.

A job dealing with lots of people would be good. You'll get plenty of material.
If you really want a job to leave time to write, pick one that will let you leave work at work. It may not pay the best, but it will give you more time to write.

Lel, I'll be in a similar situation, but I still have the majority of my college career ahead of me. I think in a case like this, since you don't want to teach, it might depend on location. Are there any publishing houses or agents nearby you can intern with? I had to do research like this for one of my classes, and there were quite a few opportunities available to college students as internships to editors, assistants, that sort of thing.

Your English degree should help you there (most pub. houses I saw weren't very picky about degrees) and then you can even learn better the inside of the trade when it comes to agenting/editors.

I know you didn't want to teach, but a lot of classes at my college are taught by graduate students (don't know if that's what you want to pursue) but there are also other opportunities available in conducting and mediating reseach studies, etc.

yeah, i was going to suggest some form of editing, but that seems covered in the post. maybe you should stay in college and collect another useful degree, like 'philosophy', lol. j/k. actually, with a degree, that's a pretty good credential if you want to be a novel proofreader, eh? that's something you can do on the side, don't have to have a boss so you can measure your commute to work with a yardstick, do in your underwear with drinking captain morgan's, and cash in pretty easy paychecks.

or you can work in a factory. nah.

ever thought about a life of crime?

dancing?

picking up cans on the side of the road?

re-write a thousand 'humour' articles and sell them to a newspaper, because they eat that crap up?

'website developer.' that one always cracks me up. that's not far from saying, 'i don't have a real job, but yet it's barely legitimate enough to keep my g/f from harping on my constant poverty.'

operate a huge on-line business out of your closet. helloooo, ebay.

write a book titled, 'the art of poverty.'

say your professor sexually harassed you, sue the university.

put the cocaine back in coke.

breed dogs.

open a cake store. when you're making half a G on wedding cakes, you'll forget all about that writing thing. and, hey, you still get to write 'happy whatever', so, you know, you're *still* writing....

be a critic.

put on a business suit, walk into a chinese retaurant, and tell them you're the health inspector. tell them you're there because there's been several complaints about cockroaches (cockroaches love chinese food). they'll bribe ya, trust me.

go through a mcdonald's drive thru during rush hour. order a water. the first window operator won't be able to collect any money (water's free), but won't have time to get it themselves. water also doesn't show up on their order thingies. pull up to next window and collect whatever food the guy behind you has already paid for. it's pot-luck, but free. sell food at discounted prices to homeless people. laugh at how much chaos you've just created. repeat until arrested.

sell 'authentic celebrity bath water.' you say you'd drink britney spears' dirty bath water? prove it.

tell fortunes. no skill required as long as you say, 'for entertainment purposes only.'

baby-sit.

sell gravestone insurance.

be a secret shopper or undercover store detective.

write a diet book. people are stoopid for those.

invent a backpack with wheels. (actually, that's not a bad idea if they already don't have those.)

open a porn site.

wash cars in a bikini.

two words: 'oiled boob rubdowns.' okay, that's three words, but we're not shooting for the stars here, are we?

mow lawns.

design a scrotum-friendly razor so i don't keep using my wife's lady gillette (shh, don't tell).

be a private investigator.

buy junk at garage sales and sell them for twice the price at flea markets (hey, don't laugh, i don't know how many thousands of dollars i've made this way).

clean houses. seriously. people will pay big bucks for that stuff.

'landscape.' of course, you shouldn't be afraid of real work.

learn spanish. again, trust me on this one. just learn spanish and you can write your own paycheck.

start a viable third political party. call it 'the american freedom' party. accept donations.

sell girl scout cookie rip-offs. these people's taste buds are so dead by now they won't know the difference, anyway.

take ordinary items, put a fancy package around them, and ask a ridiculous amount of money in hopes some sucker with too much money buys it.

become robin hood.

steal lawn furniture/grills, sell on ebay.

open a church. accept donations. open a website. claim that for just $19.95, you can put your hands on your monitor and you'll send them the power of gawd and fulfill their wishes. 'for entertainment purposes only.'

offer to chew other people's fingernails.

learn to make curtains, sell for outrageous sums of money. use cheapest materials available. claim to make best curtains in the world.

walk into a trendy nightclub and claim to be royalty. use bad accent. say you forgot purse/wallet and need cab fare back to homeland. (helps if you're very attractive.)

find osama.

start 'philosophy students against terrorists' campaign. accept donations.

move to sweden, claim to be an artist.

do you really *need* two kidneys?

Day Job

Firstly, hi all - I've been lurking on and off here for a while, catching up on Uncle Jim's mega-thread. I'm a pro TV writer in Cape Town, SA and while I earn a fairly decent living from the fast food world that is TV writing, novels have always been my first love, hence my presence in your midsts.

As to day jobs - depends on whether you want to make a decent living or just get by. If money's not that important, I highly recommend bookselling. For 5 years after I decided to abandon my fledgling law career and turn to writing, I earned not a cent from the scripted word. Selling the scripted word of others paid my bills. And although sometimes I felt like an addict working in a chemist (drugstore?), it's ultimately a great environment - you get staff discounts on the books, get to meet sales reps who can at least help you when you approaching publishing houses and, depending on the size of the shop you work at, you may even get to meet some established writers.

And I don't know about the US, but here, there are hundreds of freaking nutjob customers - my first success was a short film called "Killing Customers". Oh, and there's the added bonus of canceling orders or of hiding and misshelving the books of authors who treat you like sh*t.

Actually, preyer's list reminded of something I thought about a couple of month's ago. Your one strange man, you know that right?

I would really like to open a gourmet coffeeshop/internet cafe in the town I live in. We're small, but a major tourist area because of our "historic value." I use the term loosely because I still for the life of me cannot figure out why people still keep coming here for a taste of failed utopia. Twice.

Anyway. We have a lil ole coffee place where the old folk go for morning discussion and coffee, sort of. The movie theatre does coffee too, but on a small scale.

Funding is the biggest issue. I could probably get grants, but that takes some effort. Still it's a nice idea. Wouldn't need many employees. On quiet afternoons during the week, write my next piece of fiction. Sounds good doesn't it. *sighs*

What's your chosen genre?
Suggest you pick a day job/career which will enhance your life experience and provide useful material for your fiction.

Lel513 said:

perfect job for a young writer who only needs to make enough to live on??

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This concerns me, having done jobs like that.
Beware numbing jobs which leave you too burned out to write. You might actually be more prolific while on a demanding career track.
As a recent graduate, you have this fleeting window when you can be recruited into an organisation's graduate training programme without any specific experience.
There's a lot to be said for seeing the business world from the inside. Also, if you pick the right career track, such as PR, journalism, or techwriting, you will get to hone your writing skills on somebody else's time, not something you can do with a disposable job.

Lel513 said:

I've recently graduated from college, yet all I really want to do is write fiction.

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Whoaaa there!
I'm not saying it's not possible to live off writing straight out of college.


However, most writers don't achieve success until their late 30s. Charles Stross (who knows about such things) reckons:http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi/2005/02/27#writing-109


If you're going to have to wait 15 years anyway, you might as well make some money and get as wide a perspective on the world as possible.
Good luck. (Wish I had your relative youth.)

Z

Job

Lel513 said:

I've recently graduated from college, yet all I really want to do is write fiction. I know I can't live off of writing fiction, at least not until I write and sell a couple of novels. Yet I was wondering if anyone had any advice on a job I could get that would leave me enough time to continue to write. My degree was in English so I don't have a ready made career waiting for me(since I don't want to become a teacher). Can anyone think of a really perfect job for a young writer who only needs to make enough to live on??

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I don't think it matters, as long as it's a job that doesn't drain all your time and energy. The more of either a day job demands, the less you'll have for writing.

Someone once told me, "Never take a job you'll be afraid to quit." I think it's good advice.

The ideal job, to my mind, is one that pays enough to let you get by, and that has medical coverage, but that doesn't demand too much time or energy.

I think my middle son has a perfect job for a writer. He's night manager at a hotel, and of the eight hours he works, he's free to write at least six of them. He doesn't make a lot of money, but he makes enough to pay his way, with a bit left over for fun, and a bit left over for a rainy day.

I left university and swore that I would never teach.

Since that fateful day I have spent the majority of my professional life teaching. However, there are things to be said for teaching, especially teaching English, as I do.

Working with the language everyday keeps my chops up. I feel fine tuned and ready to write at any given moment. Having said that, teaching requires a lot of time so the given moments can sometimes be few and far between.

Also being a writer is something you don't retire from. You write until you are dead. Take in all life experience and pace yourself to in for the long haul.

Os.

Post Scriptum

Preyer, I'm impressed with the list. If only you used your powers for good...


Os.

I say look for the job you've cast a current character in--and live somewhere you've never visited.

Lel513 said:

I know I can't live off of writing fiction, at least not until I write and sell a couple of novels.

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Ya mean "a couple of novels a year," right?

Anyway, to answer your question: The job I found was "sailor." Any time you're not on watch or otherwise working your time is your own, and writing will definitely fill that time.

When writing is in you, you can make time for it no matter what you do for a living. I'm a software engineer working for a medium-sized, publicly traded, fairly demanding company. There've been times that I worked so much that I barely got adequate sleep, but for the most part I work 40-45 hours per week. I use a PDA and write during my lunch breaks, then sync with my PC when I get home. (And the pay is good so I don't have to struggle to make ends meet while I'm pursuing my dream of writing. )

I started in the industry as a technical writer (there's another idea if you're good with computers or other technology). I got paid a decent salary to write, plus had medical and 401k and all that.

If you want to stay with writing, become a copy editor or copy writer or magazine writer or ...

Teach -- community college, university... etc. BUT NOT elementary/high school. The jobs are hard to get, they work you like a dog, and give you peanuts for pay.

Or receptionist to a spa or chiropractor or corporate office... might gives you some time in between to take notes for your work or even write it.

Executive assistant (formerly known as secretary).

Start your own business.

Do temp work (work your a** off to make money, then use the down time to write).

I was going to get an MFA, but it looks like all of the schools will reject me (already got two rejections and those were the less prestigious universities. I don't have high hopes for the other two). So come May, I'm going to be floundering around like a fool because I always thought I'd go to grad school and now the joke is on me...and I'm going to start crying again. heh.

I live in the Los Angeles area and I would love, absolutely love, to work in publishing. I interned with Red Hen Press for about six months, and I adored the experience. When I graduate in May, I'll have a BA in English with a minor in creative writing. Does anybody know what I have to do to find a job in publishing? I've also been working the past 4 years as a tutor (which usually, to my chagrin, amounts to copy-editing).

It's different for everyone and every job, so I'm going to go through my personal experiences.

Working in a bookshop gave me plenty of reading time (when it was quiet in the shop in the mornings) and hefty discounts on books. I learned a lot about other authors here, and what made readers want to buy their books.

Working in book publishing (as an editorial assistant) gave me an invaluable insight into the editing process - from picking out slush manuscripts to doing line edits on books and writing cover copy. However the work load (taking manuscripts home at the weekends and evenings), plus editing other people's work all day left me too tired to get much writing done myself.

Working part-time as a proof reader gave me time, mostly, which I thought I'd fill with writing. It was easier to write on the days I made an effort, but usually I'd reward myself on my days off (for working so hard the previous days!) by going shopping and napping. Ooops.

Now I'm working full-time again in magazines (production). My mag is quite well organised, so there's little overtime. Plus, it sucks less of my creativity away (compared to working in book publishing). Furthermore, I seem to be more disciplined as well. Whether it's getting up to go to work each day, or that I've matured, I just don't know. I'm not complaining. I've written over 50k this year (not much to some, but a lot for me).

Don't make assumptions about what jobs will leave you the energy for writing and which ones won't. You might need to try them to find out for sure.

pepperlandgirl said:

I was going to get an MFA, but it looks like all of the schools will reject me (already got two rejections and those were the less prestigious universities. I don't have high hopes for the other two). So come May, I'm going to be floundering around like a fool because I always thought I'd go to grad school and now the joke is on me...and I'm going to start crying again. heh.

I live in the Los Angeles area and I would love, absolutely love, to work in publishing. I interned with Red Hen Press for about six months, and I adored the experience. When I graduate in May, I'll have a BA in English with a minor in creative writing. Does anybody know what I have to do to find a job in publishing? I've also been working the past 4 years as a tutor (which usually, to my chagrin, amounts to copy-editing).

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Get as much relevant experience as you can (whether it's copy-editing, bookselling, or office work (junior jobs can have a lot of admin)), persevere, and develop a thick skin for rejection. It's a competitive market.

Try everything on Preyer's list.
Get arrested,
write a best-seller,
go on Oprah or Judge Judy/Joe/Milian (people's Court)
tell everyone about AW and get a cut of the "profits" from Jenna.
Give absolutely (heh!) no credit to Preyer and claim him as a "separate personality free to do his own thing" when pressed.

OR

Deliver diabetes testing supplies and blue pills to actors.

Make candles for snowy states. Make red and blue specialties!

Grow tomacco. Start with tobacco and tomatoe seeds and mix while planting. Hey it worked on the Simpsons!

Try anything Homer did on The Simpsons.

Write a book about spelunking in haunted houses. Take lots of pictures.

Make rubber bracelets for writers. Green for politicals, Yellow for humorists, Pink for Romance, Black for Horror, Blue for Skiffy, Red for Action, Silver for Medical, Gold for True Crime, Brown for Biography...

List (c) The Super Snarzler

mistri said:

Get as much relevant experience as you can (whether it's copy-editing, bookselling, or office work (junior jobs can have a lot of admin)), persevere, and develop a thick skin for rejection. It's a competitive market.

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Right now the only thing I feel qualified for is hiding in bed for the rest of my life. But thanks for your advise.

I guess there's a couple of different ways you could approach it.

You could find a job that you really enjoy, so that you'd be centered enough at the end of the day to write well.

Or you could find a soul-sucking position so that your work will be full of grim angst.

I dunno. Your choice.

Yeah, find a job you absolutely hate and you can't stand the coworkers... that would motivate you to write the most gritty, gut-wrenching, angtsy stories.

Otherwise you'd end up devoting all your time on the job. At least that's what I did -- I liked my job, and it cut into my writing time and mindset...

zornhau said:

What's your chosen genre?
Suggest you pick a day job/career which will enhance your life experience and provide useful material for your fiction.






However, most writers don't achieve success until their late 30s. Charles Stross (who knows about such things) reckons:

...the ability to get under someone else's skin (to whatever extent) is much harder to come by and usually only arrives once we've kicked around the world for a few decades.








​

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blosxom.cgi/2005/02/27#writing-109




If you're going to have to wait 15 years anyway, you might as well make some money and get as wide a perspective on the world as possible.
Good luck. (Wish I had your relative youth.)

Z

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I agree with this.

Day jobs are hugely important for most writers. If you really want to be a good writer you have to experience as much of life as possible, be forced to spend time with a whole load of characters who you may not like, but will be great fiction fodder.
Think of all the weirdos there are out there to meet and deal with. That's priceless living.

Charles Dickens understood poverty and expressed hardship in a believeable manner as his middle class family fell from grace and he spent a chunk of his childhood filling jars with blacking in a stinking factory.
He probably wouldn't have been the writer he was without that experience. The list goes on.

I know it sucks thinking about waiting years to make money, but I recently read an article on ten writers who all had novels publised under 30, and only a few of them were still making a living out of it ten years later. It seemed that they just had one good book in them, whereas those that have to wait get the chance to build up a decent stock of ability.
I'd rather struggle now and be comfortable when older, than have a burst of success and then have to crash land back into the world of day jobs at a later age.

pepperlandgirl said:

Right now the only thing I feel qualified for is hiding in bed for the rest of my life. But thanks for your advise.

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Don't worry - I feel like that a lot. When I was working in bookselling, after completing my English degree, it took me a year and a lot of rejections to get a job in publishing.