Ben asked Paolo Bacigalupi:

I've read that you haven't been able to write full-time until the last few years. How did you balance your work with your writing before then? How much and how consistently did you write before you began publishing successfully?

Paolo Bacigalupi It's really a battle to find time to write, especially when the whole world is coming up with reasons to distract you. Friends, spouses, children, tv, the internet, jobs, sleep, all want your time too, and so it means that you have to be pretty serious and relentless about carving out and defending writing time.

In a lot of ways, it's a selfish act, to decide that you're going to go away, alone, and create something, and ignore everything else around you.

When I was first starting out I had a full-time job, and so I would write on the weekends. I designated Saturday as a workday, where I would go to a coffee shop and write, instead of spending time with friends or my girlfriend. I gave up a part of my social life, essentially, so that I could have the time. In addition, I also started getting up half an hour earlier on weekdays in order to get a little writing in before I went to work. So I gave up some sleep, too.

Later, as I got more serious about writing, and started thinking that it was really what I wanted to do with my life, I quit my job, and then used up all my savings writing my first novel. It was foolish, but I was convinced that everything would work out. I did write the novel successfully, but it took much longer than I expected, and in the end, no editors would buy it. By that time I was broke, so I had to go back to work. That became a pattern for me: whenever I ran out of money, I would go get another job, earn up a little bit of a war chest, and then I'd quit again to write another novel.

I was always pretty conservative with my money: I didn't really spend it on booze, or cable tv, or anything, really, and so if I kept expenses to a bare minimum, that gave me some flexibility in choosing my jobs. I always chose my work with an eye toward how much writing it might finance, and how much writing time it would eat up, and I always saw my other expenses as the things that would eat away at my writing war chest, and therefore my writing time. I was lucky because as the years passed, and got married, my wife didn't mind living a pretty basic life, and she was amazingly supportive. I ended up writing four novels that didn't sell, and I failed for over ten years, before I finally started to have some success.

Looking back, I'd say that if you want to find time to write, you have to set that time first. It doesn't really matter if all you can grab is half an hour a day, but you have to designate it, and use it, and defend it from encroachment. It has to be clear in your mind that this is your writing time.

Over time, as you use that time and defend it, it becomes a habit, and you adjust to being a writer, and all the people around you also adjust as well.

I hear a lot of people say they want to be writers. The writers I know who have become successful were all people who found some way to get the work done, regardless of whatever else was pressing in on their lives. It's not easy, for sure.

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