Leaving the Day Job - Don't Forget the Barbed Wire

A week ago I snickered to myself about how I didn't know how to write about what it's like not having a day job because I still had a day job. 

Now I don't. 

I guess this will be a learn-as-I-go adventure. I'm not raking in the sweet, sweet book cash. Not yet. The only reason I'm not running around like my hair's on fire is because there's a fall back position. I'm privileged to have a partner who does have steady employment. Let's not talk about how close he came to a layoff three days ago while we believed my position was secure. He got word he was safe and two days later my super-safe job evaporated. God, I love recession fears in the tech world. Sigh. 

This does bring me to the easiest way to cushion the slings and arrows and uncertainty of working for yourself. Have a cushion. That cushion could be someone else's steady income that your writing income supplements. That cushion could also be that you budget and plan to build a financial safety net that buys you time. If you want a year free and clear before you have to hit the bricks for another job, you better have done the math and have the cash stowed. Add up your burn rate - the amount of money per month you need to survive. Don't forget medical insurance in those costs. Factor in an emergency or two - car, veterinary, a rush airline ticket - whatever suits your circumstance. While you are gainfully employed in something that reliably hands you cash, start saving. If you make a sale or three while you are working a day job, put part of that advance into the 'writing full time' fund. Plan your exit date from the day job. Don't burn bridges! You may need that network one day. Keep writing. Keep publishing - either via a trad house or via self publishing. The money books bring in replenishes the financial cushion. The more you bring in, the longer you can stretch out the fund to support you through dry spells. Because those happen to the best and the worst of us alike.

What's it like not working a day job, though? It's randomizing. It's a little like living in a castle or a
walled city that is constantly under siege. The moment you aren't working a day job, people come out of the woodwork wanting your time and your energy because - well - you aren't 'working' working. Without really clear, strong boundaries, you'll find your entire day vanishes into a haze of doing things that serve everyone but you. 

Plan to put up barbed wire around your writing time and space. It helps to have a door that closes, maybe locks. Create the structure around writing that makes sense to you. It is the biggest piece writers miss when thinking about leaving a day job to write full time - the structure. With a day job sucking all the air out of the room, you had to fit fiction into the cracks and corners. The limits and structure around those times likely lent a sense of urgency to your word count  because you didn't have much time. Now, without a day job, the day stretches long like a highway across the desert. It's a mirage. Without planned structure in place, you'll blink and realize you haven't written a word or thought about your story for a week. Or more. It's a hard lesson to learn to say no to people, but it is necessary. It's a lesson I still struggle to learn. Just like I'm unexpectedly having to learn how to exist again without a day job defining my time. So as much is it unsettles me, check this space. There may be further developments in the 'what's it like to leave the day job' world.

The Abbreviated Manual for the Care and Feeding of Writers

Generalized instructions for keeping a writer alive, interacting with other humans with minimal snarling, reasonably happy, marginally sane, and writing (which feeds the first four conditions.)

If you love a writer:

1. Advocate for a room of the writer's own. Perfect world, this room of the writer's own is not shared space, but you know, you do what you can.
2. Ask the writer to declare office hours (this is a negotiation you participate in, because the hours have to work for you, too, in the interest of the next step.)
3. Stop talking to us while we're writing. Seriously. The house is only so big. You can find your missing thing yourself. This goes double for the refrigerator and pantry. Not everything can be in front. Move things. If you still can't find what you want, go to the store. No more interrupting writing time to ask how to find something. If the house is on fire or blood is being spilled, by all means interrupt. If you're leaving and want us to know, that's a yes from me, too, but your writer may disagree. Asking what your writer prefers belongs in the negotiation above.

If you are the writer:

1. Take responsibility for your own well-being. Creativity doesn't exist in a vacuum. It needs feeding as much as you do. To that end:
• Take your meds if you need 'em. See the MD if they aren't working.
• Drink water.
• Eat actual healthy food.
• Exercise.
2. Talk to your loved ones and your friends when you aren't writing. Help them find their things in your off hours if that's their love language. Part of caring for and feeding you means caring for and feeding the people you care about. (Yeah, I know the numbering has lost its damned mind - went into the HTML to fix and let's just say that didn't go well. It shouldn't be news to anyone that computers can't really count.)
3. Set office hours. Keep them. Enforce them from a place of love and compassion for the people and critters in your life. This is why I will always advocate for a writer having a door to shut, even if I don't have that, myself. Remember that 'No.' is a complete sentence.
4. Get out into nature once in a while to remind yourself you live in this world as well as the worlds of your stories.
5. Cultivate a hobby. Preferably one radically different than writing. Knitting. Gardening. Painting. Serial remodels. Whatever. You're looking for something to take you out of the frustrations inherent to writing and put you in different brain space. Bet your problem solving is speedier.
6. Find community. It's natural to talk about what we do, what we aspire to, and what we wish we could do. Our families may not be equipped to have those conversations. It isn't that they don't care, they just may not have the frame of reference that allows them to do anything more than smile and nod. So it's vital to find or create a community of fellow writers who can validate your experiences in a way family might want to, but can't.
7. Lighten up and don't take writing, yourself, or the care and feeding rules too seriously. Cause this is all about figuring out what works and what support you need from your nearest and dearest.

Seven Things You Must Avoid If You Want to Write

These three books are on sale right now. THE MARK OF THE TALA, the book that started it all, first in The Twelve Kingdoms series. Also THE PAGES OF THE MIND, my RITA® Award-winning novel, which kicks off a new phase in the overall series, and PRISONER OF THE CROWN, first in a stand-alone spin off trilogy, The Chronicles of Dasnaria. If you've been thinking about reading my books or this series, it's a great time to start!

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week regards the writer's Seven Deadly Sins: the list of things you MUST avoid if you want to finish a project on time. Of course, if you're supposed to be writing, and you're reading this, you've already broken three of mine. Oops. But never fear! There is still hope for you. Read on.


1.  Avoid the internet, full stop. 

We all know this, right? And in a different world, we could avoid the time suck and distractions of the internet entirely. But with so much tied to the internet - from our phones to messages to mail - it's not viable to ignore the internet entirely. There's always the cabin in the mountains, but people still want to that you haven't been eaten by a grizzly bear.

2. If you must internet, avoid social media.

So, if you do have to check something connected to the internet, don't open Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. I disable my notifications (which they really hate and are always messaging me to change) so I only see that stuff if I actually go to the site. That takes some willpower, yes, but nothing like what it takes to break free of the gravitational pull once I do look. 

3. Stay away from click bait and rabbit holes (like this).

When I inevitably see an internet something, I have to exercise additional will power not to click on links. Remember: they're designed to make you WANT to click. (I made this post title click bait on purpose to illustrate the point.) Once they have your attention in their greedy clutches, they use all sorts of tricks to keep you there and spiraling ever downward. Best not to look in the first place. If I see something I really want to know about, I save the link. 

4. Prioritize your work over peopling.

There's a good reason so many writers are introverts: because they find it easier to avoid peopling. Even then, however, socializing can really disrupt a writing schedule. For me, I have to block out more time to write than I use actually writing. I need time to settle in, to ramp up, to take breaks. People who don't write rarely understand this. They also don't understand the trancelike focus writing requires and that their "one quick question" can derail a writer for hours.

5. Ignore people who don't (or won't) get it. 

Which is why you have to draw a bright, hard line for the people in your life. Do whatever it takes to get them to understand and respect your writing time. If they still don't get it? Well, I'd venture to say that we don't need people in our lives like that. A hard stance, I know, but if they won't respect your passion and livelihood, what exactly DO they add to your life?

6. Kick other people out of the room.

Not physically, because we did this in #5, right? These are the people in your head who like to yammer on about what you're writing. Some might be positive influences. Others might be severely critical. There's always someone yelling about what you CAN'T POSSIBLY DO. How can a person write in all that noise??? That's right, we can't. So kick them all out and enjoy the blessed silence.

7. Acknowledge fear and let it go.

I have a sign over my desk that says, "What would you write if you weren't afraid?" Sometimes when I tell people this, they reply that they're not afraid of anything. Bully for them. Also, I don't believe them. Any time I worry about how something I write will be received, that's fear. Ignoring that concern does nothing. Instead, whenever I fret over something in a story, I try to acknowledge that fear, look at my poster, and then write what I would if that worry had never occurred to me.

If I can avoid these pitfalls, I just might get my book finished on time. 

Protecting the Writing: a Quick How-To

I'm hard at work writing THE ORCHID THRONE, the first in my new trilogy for St. Martins Press. So, naturally, I had to impulse-buy this gorgeous orchid from Trader Joe's. It's my new desk ornament, following the USB-plug in Christmas tree, cherry blossom tree, and foaming cauldron. This one notably does NOT require electricity, which seems appropriate for the world I'm writing. However, it does require attention to be kept alive. So far my record with orchids is pretty abysmal. (Don't tell this gal!) We shall see. Any tips for keeping orchids alive in a desert climate?

Last week I traveled to Phoenix to give a presentation to the Desert Rose Romance Writers. This one was "A Taoist’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Writing Business." I talked a whole lot about how the relentless push to get rich can make us crazy, and how to find a peaceful place of sane creativity in the midst of that. But, during the great discussion at the end, one gal asked if I had advice about family who don't believe in your career, who actively interfere or dis what you're doing, or who won't approved of your eventual story.

This is, of course, not an easy question to answer, though several gals in the room had advice for her, too. It's also our topic at the SFF Seven this week: How much space do you give non-writing emotional labor - or how do you save mental space for the work with a head full of mortgage and other people's expectations? I'd call this a coincidence, but I'm a Taoist I know it's not.

Everybody struggles with this. It's an issue that affects everyone, not just writers, and not just creatives. Unless we're hermits, life is a balancing act of what we do to please ourselves and what we do to please others. At one end of the extreme, we have the sociopath (or hermit) who cares nothing for other people's needs or is completely isolated from them. At the other end is the doormat, that abject individual who lives as a metaphorical slave to the needs of others, to the point that they have nothing of their own.

The answer - as with all things of the Tao, since I'm already coming at it from that angle - is finding the middle way.

This is easier said than done. Like so many aspects of finding the middle way, it takes constant re-evaluation and adjustment - and honest self-examination. What we can depend on is that things will always change. Sometimes people in our lives honestly need us more than other times. There are illnesses and emergencies - emotional and physical - and times of crisis.

The trick is to differentiate the real crises from the over-dramatized kind. Because we all know those people, right? The ones who have daily crises, if not more often, and for whom EVERYTHING is a MAJOR HUGE DEAL SO YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO ME RIGHT NOW.

And I'm not just talking about cats!

So, how do we deal with this? By drawing boundaries and sticking to them. Make your writing sacred and build a fence around it. And a big stone wall. Maybe add a lava moat, too. Post the rules for entry clearly. If someone fakes their way in, then they get stiffer rules and penalties going forward until they prove they can be trusted again. Treat it like a game if you have to, but erect that fortress and defend it vigorously!

This goes for your own worries, too. Give those distracting thoughts names and identities and make them obey the rules, too. They don't get to come into the fortress. Everything and everyone gets their time and place.

Under heaven some things lead, some follow, 
some blow hot, some cold, 
some are strong, some weak, some are fulfilled, some fail.

So the wise soul keeps away
from the extremes, excess, extravagance.

Chapter 29, Tao Te Ching
by Lao Tzu, translated by Ursula K. Le Guin

That's how you do it: draw the boundaries and know that you'll have to defend them. And also know to keep from the extremes. Find the middle way.