Alison Kent's Blah Blog

Working on the highway laying down the blacktop
Working on the highway all day long I don’t stop
Working on the highway blasting through the bedrock
Working on the highway, working on the highway
~ Bruce Springsteen

When I’m heavy-duty into writing and find something I want to blog about, I grab the links, stick them in a post, give it a title, and save it as a draft. When I go back, I often change the title to something more appropriate and cutesy, but this one I think will stick. Because that’s what I want to talk about. Writing with a day job.

In a post dated September 12th (yeah, you see how long I save things?), Tamara Siler Jones talks about “workin’ in the coal mine.” (Note the theme here? *g*) Go read the whole post because there are too many choice tidbits for me to cut and paste here. But she does say:

First – and this is just my experience so please don’t email me telling me I’m full of shit – try to avoid a job that’s primarily working with words. I believe that creativity is like a muscle. Use it or lose it. And there are a variety of different types, some possibly connected. Visual creativity – like painting; Auditory creativity – like music; Muscular-skeletal creativity – like a gifted athlete; and so on and so forth. Lots of different kinds of creativity. If you keep using the same creative muscle over and over and over at your job, my personal experience indicates that doing the same type of activity is probably not gonna happen in your spare time.

Anyone who’s been reading here long, knows that I went to work on May 1, 1989 at the same company that laid me off on January 31, 2004. In the fall of 2003, our department manager knew that lay-offs were inevitable. Since she knew how much I wanted to write full time, my boss asked me if I wanted to go. I jumped at the chance. Scared to death about it. Jumped anyway. I’d signed with Brava, was working steadily with Blaze, had a decent backlist paying royalties (though royalties are gravy – advances are the meat) and after 15 years, a great severance coming. In her post On Being A Starving Artist, agent Rachel Vater says:

It’s definitely not easy on the finances to switch over to a career as an author. Somewhere in a busy schedule, writers must find the time to write that first novel… or second or third or fourth… that will get their career started. Then it’s a common writer’s dream to get their big break so they can become full-time writers, ditch their jobs, and stay home instead of juggling a writing career with another career. Life would be easier for everyone if we all had giant trust funds or a wealthy partner or patron who would fund us as we explored career options and got our businesses off the ground. In real life though, this is rarely the case.

I remember my first day home. Daughter #2 was home that day, off from work and from classes, and for lunch she cooked chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes, fried okra, and we watched Rabbit Proof Fence. Yes, I remember all of that. I also remember that I was writing THE BANE AFFAIR and it was overdue and it needed to go in – which it did on Februrary 22. Yes, I remember all of that, too. (This is one reason my ex-boss loved having me around. She could blurt out an account discrepancy, and I knew what it was, no matter how old.)

Thing was, I was behind on Bane because of something writing related that had happened the year before while I was writing INDISCREET. It was over and done with – but it wasn’t. It carried on, making me late with Bane. Which put me behind getting started with Shaughnessey, and Samms, and Beach, and McKenzie. I had planned out my deadlines so carefully, never anticipating that spring of 2003 event that would throw me off course. So, here I was, all the time in the world, yet scrambling to catch up. Something was not right in my full-time writing world.

Because writing was all I had on my plate, that THING was sitting on my shoulder All. Of. The. Time. Every word I wrote was wrong. Painfully wrong. My brain was doing nothing but writing. I had no downtime. I was overusing my creative muscle. Not that I loved accounting, bleh, but I missed it because of how it gave me, well, Tamara says it best:

Hopefully, while the left brain’s humming along balancing the books, the right brain’s letting that nugget stew and get spicy so it’s ready to come out onto the page that night. The thing is that since you’re not using that left-brained creative muscle much, you have to make a point to think about it, even subconsciously, or the muscle never develops.

Not only was my mind turning to mush, I missed downtown. And I missed the people I’d worked with for 15 years. The commute, not so much, but I would live downtown in a heartbeat. I love the energy, the revitalization of the older areas, etc. If you’ve read my gIRL-gEAR books, they’re all set in areas of Houston that I love.

Anyhow, I survived and kept chugging and kept scrambling and was deep in writing THE PERFECT STRANGER when I got an email on my birthday from an ex-coworker. We’d kept in touch since my lay-off, and that day changed everything. You see, the office had always had trouble keeping a receptionist. Most of the calls came in on the employees’ direct lines, so the switchboard was fairly quiet. In the email, my friend jokingly suggested I call the HR guy and take the job. I blinked. I reread her note. I went out into the backyard and sat in the sun (this was early morning; it was still bearable) and talked to the husband. And then I called.

By noon, I was employed again.

Now, before you think INSANE WOMAN, let me explain that I would not have taken any job that came up. No way. This one, however, was a no-brainer. You see, even though I took a huge pay cut to move from accounting to the front desk, they reinstated my seniority, meaning I still get my 22 paid vacation days a year. The company also offers something very few do these days: 100% paid health insurance. 100%. As in, 100%. Those things were great incentives, the gravy, as it were. The meat?

I get to write on the job.

Yes, I know. You hate me. *g* Previous receptionists had spent time on personal calls, reading (which I do, too), surfing the web, etc. The one who I replaced had moved into another part of the company only weeks before, and a temp was answering phones as they looked for a new hire. I started after Labor Day weekend. I wrote a huge chunk of THE PERFECT STRANGER in the lobby you see here. (That’s the front corner of the receptionist’s station, and the other is the view out the window behind me.)

I’m not saying that writing full-time isn’t exactly the life many writers want and need. And I do want to write full-time again one day. What doing so for 2 1/2 years showed me was that I wasn’t ready. And, no. If this hadn’t come up, I wouldn’t have gone looking. I would still be working from home with the husband. (I do miss that part – being with him!)

Yes, I hate getting up at 5:30, and I hate wearing makeup. The office is business casual, so I don’t mind getting dressed. And I ride into downtown with Daughter #1 who works nearby. I haul my laptop in with me, set it up, write, work on websites, blog hop, email – all the things I did from home, but now I’m getting paid while doing it all. Really. I’ve been happier the last three months than I have in the last two years. Yes, part of that is finally getting my last crunched manusript out the door, but the rest is interacting with people in real life instead of just online. I get to do my people watching again. Life is sweet!

Updated to add these bits about writing full time found courtesy of May:

No matter what you may have heard elsewhere or however you may have romanticized the life of working writers, know this: it is, with very, very few exceptions, a brutal, ugly, and unrelentingly difficult existence. It is a grind, no matter how much you may love to write or feel driven to tell stories. Personal demons aside, you will encounter at almost every turn no shortage of idiots and shitheels upon whom you must depend to get your work to readers. Occasionally, there will be a fortunate abberation: a wonderful, brilliant editor, or a copyeditor who doesn’t try to express herhimitself vicariously by attempting to rewrite your work, or an agent who busts hisherits ass for you. You may even be so fortunate as to encounter a publisher who cares more about herhisits authors than the bottom line. Those things do happen. But don’t ever fucking count on it. If you come to this life, and if you “make it” and can actually eek out some sort of living writing, you will likely learn these things for yourselves.

Writing STAYS WITH YOU. You wake to it, you work with it, you leave the computer but the story’s still in your head, you walk the dog or clean the cat litterbox and you’re hashing out a plot point in your mind, you forget to do laundry or put the rubbish out on collection day because you’re too tied up in what you’re doing, you miss appointments because your week isn’t a 9-5 work week and days don’t mean what they mean to weekday-working folk who think that Saturdays are for rest and relaxation – but it’s just another writing day, for the writer. It’s not a colleague, this career, it’s a lover, and it’s something that follows you around and shapes you and changes you and makes you accomodate its whims and its passions and makes those whims and passions your own.