Writer Unboxed

I was talking to my financial advisor on the phone yesterday, putting together my investment strategy for next year. I hadn’t spoken to him since before I retired from the military. He asked me what I was doing now. When I told him, he said, “Well, at least you set yourself up for it. I just got off the phone with a guy who had quit his job, took out a home equity loan, and was living on the money so he could write books.”

I didn’t really need to ask, but I did anyway. This guy was in bad shape. The money had run out, no million-dollar contracts were forthcoming, and bills were piling up – not the least of which was the mortgage payment on the home he had so gleefully used as collateral to support his new “life plan.”

Life plan. Are you kidding me?

If even one person reading this has ever – in a moment of the most sublime and ridiculous hubris – considered doing this, or something like it, read this now and don’t. Just forget it. Put the thought out of your mind.

Do not quit your day job.

I’m sure some of you are saying, “but Dave, there are articles on your website that say exactly the opposite. You said, ‘go for it.’ You said, ‘follow your dream.’ You said, ‘don’t settle.’ ”

All true. But I did not say, “drop everything, with no preparation, no financial plan, no renewable or passive source of income, and then hope for a lightning strike.” I never said that.

Dear friends: there’s risk, and then there’s acceptable risk.

It doesn’t take a genius and thousands of dollars in capital to give yourself a little security before you decide to pursue a creative venture full-time. The same holds true of any entrepreneurial venture – any stay-at-home, you’re-the-boss kind of job where you make your own hours (80 of them a week), plan your own vacations (when you can afford to take them), and enjoy more quality time with your family (hey, at least you’re all in the same building).

My current ventures are both creative and entrepreneurial. I’ve been at it for about ten months now. It’s not making me rich yet – at least not in the traditional sense. But I’m meeting people, making contacts, developing a professional reputation. Plus – and this is key – I absolutely love what I am doing. Every minute. Every day. Every time I sit down to work, I think, “this is the most ridiculous amount of fun I could ever have and get away with calling it a job.” I love the looks on faces when I tell people I’m a creativity coach.

You’re a what?

I got a little off-topic here. I always do. That’s why I love doing this: I ramble, and they let me. No amount of money is worth the loss of that privilege.

Back to topic: doing what you love is key. Yes. But expecting it to make you a million dollars in your first year of full-time operation is folly. You’re still an intern. In all of the many trades I have experienced, interns don’t get paid anything. They do the work to gain experience, and make their money doing something else.

Writing has been the best internship ever. The single best reason for keeping your day job is the most obvious. It gives you something to write about. Whatever else you’re doing is food for the muse. Every little scut job you’ve taken to pay the rent is another job you can give to a character. Every back-breaking weekend gig you’ve taken to keep the beer money flowing is a story waiting to happen. When I was in college (an embarrassingly wide gulf of years separates us from that actual event, so don’t even think about asking), I once spent a weekend cleaning an ancient printing press. That stained, cobwebbed, evil-looking monstrosity inspired not just one story, but several. It also inspired me to think about printing books myself.

For writers, it’s all tied together. There’s no separation. It’s all life, experience, and deserves to be written down. That’s the best reason. It keeps your head in the game. When your head is not in the game, you write story after story featuring a writer as the main character.

You are all writers, and so I love you dearly and with a full heart, but I warn you: if you do this, I will find you. If the stars align and you are able to earn your daily crust from the quality of your craft, and you squander your time (and mine) writing about writing, I will track you unto the end of my days. When I really, seriously retire, I will drive around the country in an old beat-up Ford Fairmont station wagon, its trunk heavily burdened with lemon meringue pies. I will travel to the houses of writers who have committed this unpardonable sin, and I will meet each at his or her doorstep with a faceful of hot meringue. It will be delivered with love and respect, which will not diminish the sting of that gooey lemon stuff in your eyeball.

A million cool jobs in the world, and you want to write about writers? Here’s a little newsflash: nobody cares except us. The rest of the world will be bored.

In my various attempts to keep myself fed while pursuing my craft, I have called the following activities “jobs:”

• Paperboy
• Restaurant busboy
• Broadcast announcer (radio and TV)
• Chimney sweep (that one was fun – my boss was a complete lunatic, and had us dress like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins)
• Record store clerk
• Newspaper cartoonist
• Newspaper journalist
• Magazine writer
• Guitar and drum teacher
• Military policeman
• Best Buy Geek Squad guy
• Hotel night security

Those are in no particular order. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some (and I left out the printing press gig since I already mentioned it). Those jobs lasted anywhere from two days to eight years.

Every single one of them produced at least one story. Many produced several. My first novel was inspired by my first year of duty as a military cop. My third novel was inspired by my first deployment experience. While I spent fifteen years in Europe and deployed or performed temporary duty in dozens of exotic locations, I also got great stories out of working in a restaurant twenty miles from my home town. I have gotten great stories out of my experiences in my home town (my most recent novel, Watershed, is a big thank-you to the beautiful Tennessee small town of my youth – and since my youth was dangerously near the end of the Cretaceous period, don’t even think about asking).

I also kept my day jobs while writing because I like to eat. This is the second best reason. All that stuff about “suffering for your art?” Bullpucky. Too bad nobody told Hemingway he didn’t have to be a manic-depressive alcoholic to be brilliant.

If you can exist in a relative degree of comfort and still pursue your dream, doesn’t it make sense to do so? And we can all do so. You will hurt enough – trust me on this one – without inflicting needless suffering on yourself.

Get a job at a sandwich shop. Write a story about your strange discovery in the rear storage closet, back behind the walk-in freezer. There is something to be discovered everywhere you look. When I worked as a restaurant busboy, I came up with all kinds of stories – creatures lurking in the big dumpsters next to the loading dock, the weird things you see unloading trucks onto that dock at 3 o’clock in the morning (flashers, drunks and something that could have been Bigfoot), and one surreal, strange tale about the little sheets of aluminum foil you wrap potatoes in for baking.

It’s all there, it’s all happening, no matter what you’re doing, no matter what your “job” is. Your job is anything that keeps you fed. They are all honorable, deserving of respect. None are beneath you. Writing is who you are. If you spend your summer shoveling manure, you will write beautiful and personal stories about shoveling manure, filled with dizzying insights and all the truth of mortality.

And you get to eat.

Image courtesy of Paikin07.

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