Writing Work and Non-Writing Work—The Reality of the Literary Life

(A longer version of this article originally appeared on my blog, Focus on Fiction.)

When I was young (never mind how young), I used to think that writers sprung fully formed into their profitable and prolific literary careers, like Athena who, according to Greek mythology, sprung from Zeus’s forehead.

Now that I am older (never mind how much older), I know from firsthand experience that the road to writing is a long and winding one, full of stops and starts, detours and roadblock, successes and setbacks.

And since writers, like the rest of the population, like to eat, have a roof over their heads, and pay their bills, the literary life often exists in tandem with a non-literary occupation.

Sometimes the work famous authors did to earn their bread before they started having some success with their words had, on the face of it, little connection with their subsequent published work.

So that made me think about the rest of us, myself included, and the kind of work we did (and possibly still do) before we started writing full-time.

Does the work in some way align with writing: as a teacher, copywriter or editor, for example? Or do we choose to keep our two forms of labor as far apart as possible on the career categories scale, not wanting to overload our creative gray cells?

And if we have switched the type of work we used to do to something that seems more “writer-ly,” do those other jobs in some way still come into play in our literary life?

Nothing is ever wasted, especially if you’re a writer. And while sometimes it’s overheard conversations or witnessed interactions that inspire the creative process, other times it can be from experiences closer to home that serve as triggers: jobs we held, people we met, even emotions that those occupations generated.

So don’t regret your day jobs, past or present. Use them as source material!