Writing Full Time: When Writing Is Your Life

by Robin Lovett
published in Writing

Writing full time. Every writer’s fantasy, right?

It’s our ultimate goal, isn’t it? Selling enough books to quit the day job.

I’ve been testing the theory over the last four weeks on an extended break from my day job, and I have to confess, I’m not sure if it’s my ultimate fantasy anymore.

I know. I know. You’re probably going, seriously? For real? I’m wondering too, am I so spoiled that I can’t appreciate the gift of full time writing? Have I become jaded and fallen into a case of “the grass is always greener”?

Maybe. Caveat, I love writing. It is my BAE, before-anything-else, my number one favorite thing to do each day. What I’m not so sure about is whether doing nothing but writing 6-8 hours per day every day is what I really want. Does this sound awesome or heavenly to you? Perhaps for a few days or even a week, but for four weeks? A full year?

Here are some of the tribulations I’ve encountered while writing full time over the last month. The results of my full time writing experiment.

Obsession

I’m obsessed with writing even when I’m doing it part time, but full time, I’m verily addicted. It becomes my life. I use writing as an excuse to avoid doing daily things like housework and errands. It’s a compulsion. I quit talking to people, quit moving and interacting with the world. I become a computer zombie.

Loneliness

I turn into a social hermit. And the only time I see my work colleagues, my fellow writers, is when I meet up with my writer friends in the evenings when they’re off work, which equates to maybe four hours per week. That’s a lot of professional isolation time, and it results in awkward social deficiencies when I do see people. How do I create conversation when the only thing that’s happened all day is what’s happened to my characters in my novel?

Sedentary

My body starts to ache. Knee aches, back aches, neck aches, sitting in one position for hours at a time is painful. This may be no different from some day jobs, but writing alone, I have no reason to get up except for water, food and the bathroom. I could take as few as two hundred steps a day, if I don’t conscientiously schedule exercise time.

Stigma

People who aren’t writers think I sit around doing nothing all day. I keep my pen name pretty private given the stigma that comes with writing genre romance. When I have to tell people who don’t know I’m a writer that, “I’m not working,” it feels like a gross misrepresentation of my work. To the non-writers, it appears I’m sitting on my bum all day. Well, I am sitting on my bum all day, for many hours a day, but that doesn’t mean I’m doing nothing. And just because I’m not making money (yet!) doesn’t mean I’m not working.

Pressure

When writing is all I do, my life rotates around the deadlines I make for myself. They’re arbitrary sure, but when it’s all I’m thinking, those arbitrary deadlines loom like clouds with life and death consequences. They swing all day in my head like heavy pendulums.

The most recent deadline I set for myself—finish working through my draft by the end of the month—I was a week late in meeting. The final week was a race against the voice in my head, “I’m late! I’m late!” alla the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. I did finish, but the stress of being late, given that I had nothing else to worry about in my life, was stomach twisting. And when I did finish, after I sent it off to my crit partner, I got about an hour of euphoric relief.  I did it! Until the truth sank in: “it’s over”. The thing that had been driving me daily and motivating my “entire life” was over.

And since the deadline was something that I created for myself, no one else gave a damn that I’d finished my draft.

My despondency was thick and consuming. If I had my day job to go to the next morning, would I have felt that severe sense of loss and depletion? My draft was done, but my days off of work were not. What was I going to do all day? The idea of starting another project felt as meaningless as finishing the last draft. No one but me cared if I wrote more.

But that’s not true.  My writing friends care.

Now, when I think of that dream, selling enough books to quit my day job and write full time, I’m not so sure I completely want that anymore. Maybe having a half and half, part time writing, part time day job, is a little healthier for my sanity.

Though once I’m back to my full time day job, I’m sure I’ll disagree with myself and start moaning again about how badly I wish I could write full time. “The grass is always greener.”

Anybody else? Have you ever tried writing full time? How did you manage? Better than me, maybe!


Sarah-Lovett-photo-223x300

Robin Lovett, also known as S.A. Lovett, writes contemporary romance, and her debut novel, Racing To You, will be released July of 2016. She is represented by Rachel Brooks of the L. Perkins Agency and has a forthcoming series releasing with SMP Swerve in the summer of 2017.

She writes romance to avoid the more unsavory things in life, like day jobs and housework. To feed her coffee and chocolate addictions, she loves overdosing on mochas. When not writing with her cat, you can find her somewhere in the outdoors with a laptop in her bag. Feel free to chat with her on Twitter.

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