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Unwise is the writer who quits
his day job too soon.
In the back of virtually all fi ction writers’ minds lurks
the dream: quitting the ol’ day job and writing fi ction
full time.
Maybe the dream includes living in a cabin by a lake
and writing all day as the birdies sing and the coffee
brews. Or typing away in a tidy little condo in the city,
while outside, on the street, harried commuters waste
their lives driving to work.
Ah yes, the dream.
Is it all it’s cracked up to be?
Let’s think it through again. Consider:
1. Quitting your day job too soon may put negative
pressure on your writing. You may be tempted
to chase the market as your writing suffers. Re-
member, if you recognize a trend, it’s usually
too late to jump on the bandwagon.
2. The dream may not be anything close to realistic.
It can get you high, but you come down real fast.
3. You need to have incredible desire and self-dis-
cipline to write full time. Novelist Stephanie
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Grace Whitson says, “It takes determination,
commitment, self-denial, self-control, and
sometimes the ability to live on ramen noodles
for days at a time.”
Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so?
There’s a support group for that. It’s called
everybody, and they meet at the bar.
—Drew Carey
4. You will need a financial plan. As a rule of
thumb, you should have at least two books un-
der contract and be receiving royalties (not just
living off the dregs of your advance). Then you
must determine how much per month you can
live on, and make realistic adjustments.
5. Don’t ignore the fi nancial benefi t of the day job.
Author Sharon Dunn says, “A steady predict-
able paycheck contributes a great deal to peace
of mind. Living in a constant state of panic ev-
ery time a bill arrives makes focusing on vari-
ous writing projects that much harder. Once
you are an established writer, royalty payments
still fl uctuate.”
6. A day job can keep you normal and connected
to people. An agent was heard to remark that
writers who quit their day jobs become “weird”
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and demand more attention. There’s something
to that. Having a job where you interact with
“normal” people can keep you grounded.
7. You ca n fi nd plot and character ideas in your
day job. As Stephen King notes in On Writing,
people love to read about work. Even a mun-
dane job can be an interesting background for
a character if handled right.
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