The Writer and the Full-Time Job
By Rheea Mukherjee | November 5, 2021 |
After more than a decade of freelancing and co-running a small boutique firm that provided creative branding services in Bangalore, I jumped ship and took my first full time job at age 37. In the past, my only full-time jobs were smaller stints I did as a social worker right after college and summer barista jobs.
Up till last month, I was a published author who had paid the bills mostly by working on my own terms with copious amounts of flexibility. But the pandemic hit, and things got harder and harder. The late and dwindling payments were not enough to stabilize even with help from my family.
It’s true that a vast majority of published/ professional writers will need a day job to support themselves. In an epically ideal world, we’d be paid well for articles, workshops, talks, and teaching stints that would all line up perfectly with our schedules. I consider myself lucky to have made most of my adult life with the ability to write and set my own hours for work that actually paid me.
This is why I resisted a traditional full-time job for years. I thought I’d never be able to adapt to a 9 to 6 job in a larger company.
Last month I got an offer to join a rapidly growing start-up as a senior content manager. The opportunity had come because of my years of experience in branding but also because of the unique insights I might be able to provide from my creative writing life.
Part of my larger resistance to a traditional full-time job was that most people in that set-up were forced to look at life through limited ideas of time management. The workday culture, in my opinion, keeps our identity and purpose latched to work. It makes tending to the rest of our life seem like just a nice notion, something you just had to do, like eat and sleep. There didn’t seem to be any room to nurture ourselves in ways outside the imagination of a weekend.
Most importantly, the full-time job aids the way our hyper-capitalistic world has taught us to be ‘productive’ and measures our worth only through these metrics.
The question that has no answer is this: Can the larger corporate world really benefit from the insights of the life of a creative writer? Can it structurally offer a space where these two divergent lifestyles can interact in a meaningful way?
There are many possible answers to this, but suffice to say that I didn’t go into this with dreamy ideas of dismantling some of the oppressive structures of larger companies. I went for two reasons. The first being my belief that I could provide value through my experience and apply it to a much larger infrastructure. And second, it would provide me with an above average paycheck that would come every month with the promise of more in short amounts of time.
The truth is, I have started this new life at a very opportune era. It takes up the time between the endless waiting a writer must live with. In July, I finished writing my second book. The time it will take my agent to read, process, edit, and then submit will take months. It will take more months to go through submissions and the hope of being published again. I am in a fantastically sweet spot of having one book published, a second one finished, and the luxury of being busy while waiting for it to be sorted out. A more depressing way to think about this is that I could have used this time to write a third or even a fourth book. But with no money, there is no writing.
Every individual has unique financial needs and massive social commitments to work with, and some of those circumstances can create a very unfair world when it comes to being ‘accomplished.’
How do most writers come to terms with the fact that there are rigid structures in place that ‘gatekeeps’ how we write, when we write, and what we write?
I know writers who wake up at 5am to write, just so they can tend to their families, work an entire day, get some exercise in, possibly cook, feed others, and somehow get to bed early enough to support a 5am wake-up. The very thought of this exhausts me and yet this is just the reality and the norm for many writers.
It is also an illustration of our flexible human capabilities.
There are things I could have never imagined doing and yet have had to do because there was no other choice. I suspect many 5 AM writers with full-time jobs and families also do this because they must.
But this also reminds me that humans have started to take pride in how busy they are. We have become documenters of how much we can accomplish in one day. I reckon it’s a coping mechanism, because the truth is, humans can expand and twist into many positions to endure all kinds of suffering. There is always context to what we think is hard – it could be so much worse. It could be so, so, so, so, so much worse. And so we construct a world where we all adjust to our idea of normal. Is that reason enough to measure who we are, what our life and imagination is worth? Is our worth determined by how much or how little we can ‘do’ in a day?
I won’t have much time to think about these questions for the foreseeable future. The hours of relief from working a 9 to 6 will be spent recovering, cooking, eating, sleeping, editing, and writing when I can. All this while knowing there are people who work 60+ hours a week. An idea I can’t fathom.
It seems that the world we live in is designed to keep us firmly living life swinging between the polarities of ‘work’ and ‘life’. If you have a passion, an art/ activity that nurtures your wellbeing, it seems that only those who are able and willing to play the productivity game can do it all.
As a writer though, what would I be without the imagination to want more? To break out of the notions that I have to do it all in this one particular way? I don’t have a ready solution. I suspect writing about it is a part of that larger imagination. For now, I have words, ones that can meet yours, and together our words can shift our consciousness into delightful, scintillating ideas of what a workday can look and feel like.
What do you think about productivity? How do you manage work-work and writing work? Do you struggle with the idea of what it means to be a productive writer who also manages family and work? I’d love to know your thoughts.
[coffee]
Rheea Mukherjee is the author of The Body Myth, (February 2019/ Unnamed Press). Her fiction and non-fiction have been published in several publications including Scroll.in, Southern Humanities Review, Out of Print, QLRS, and Anti Serious among others.
She is the co-founder of Write Leela Write, a design and content laboratory in Bangalore, India.
She spends most of her spare time eating and making vegan hipster things.
Learn more at www.rheeamukherjee.com, and follow her on Twitter and Facebook.
This is an interesting take on questions I have wrestled with for many years. It’s also interesting to see how someone completely different from me looks at these issues (I’m a Gen-X, rural American male who grew up with a heavy work ethic since I was a pre-teen).
I kind of envy writers who I read about who are able to live on their terms and make enough of a living to write and live in the creative sphere. I had much more creativity when I was in a Master’s program in my 20’s than I do now after working two decades in a full-time plus job in my (early!) 50’s.
I recently got very motivated to write my first novel, and I’m working on the concept of it now. It will be interesting to see, going forward, how I tackle these questions you raised. Thanks.
Bravo on your first novel! Unfortunately, few writers support themselves (let alone a family) writing full time. No matter what anyone says. But if that is the goal, it usually takes a spouse or partner working full time to make up the difference.
There is light in the tunnel! These days writers have options and are no longer limited to years of trudging through the muddy waters of the publishing industry.
Best of luck!
I have worked full-time since I graduated from college in 2001. I have never been in-between jobs, never had a time when I wasn’t working when I could focus in on something creative (except for a short maternity leave in 2008, but then all I really wanted to do was sleep). For a little while I added grad school to my full-time schedule. That was awful. I dropped out.
My work is in publishing, so I am already always reading, writing, and looking at a computer screen all day, which can make it hard to also sit down and write novels. But most of the time now, I’m able to strike a kind of balance. And I have been very lucky to work from home since 2005, which has always meant an extra layer of flexibility when it comes to “getting it all done.”
That said, it does get to be too much. Lately my husband has really stepped up to help with all the invisible, unpaid work I’ve also been doing around the house for most of our marriage. I can’t emphasize enough how much of a difference that has made (both for my writing and for our relationship).
Thanks for the reminder of how lucky I am: I have spent all but three years of my career “with the ability to write and set my own hours for work that actually paid me.” We all have to figure out our best life balance between more money and more time; for me, having the head space to create is the most important thing. I’m in awe of those who can finish a passion project even when their workdays are scheduled by someone else. But it sounds like the perfect time for you to try something different. Good luck and I look forward to hearing about your next book!
I’m a writer, retired, living my days mostly on my own schedule. My suggestion is to spend time soul searching what you want in life and go for it however that looks and feels. The future is not promised, but you can be the happiest when you are fulfilling your passion. I notice most agents keep writers waiting, waiting and waiting. That works on a persons emotions no matter who you are. While waiting for that one phone call, that one email, can help us think we aren’t good enough—help us lose interest—the list goes on and on. Check out the pros and cons of Self Publishing. You might be surprised what the future holds. Best of luck.
What on earth is wrong with working? It’s as if having to work at something else somehow means failure as a novelist. Far from it! Poet T.S. Elliot worked in a bank. Wallace Stevens worked in the insurance industry. Phillip Larkin was a librarian. Walt Whitman was a medical orderly. Okay, poets. Sure. We get that, but consider fiction writers. Trollope worked in the post office. Joseph Conrad was a sea captain. Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor. Military service has shaped so many. Clergy. Scientists. Flight attendants. Teachers. Lawyers. The list of day jobs goes on. Heck, Shakespeare was an actor.
To write you have to live and to live you have to work. There may come a point where the demands of a fiction career mean leaving my other career, but for me that would be a sad day. Everything I do makes me everything I am, and everything I am makes me the writer who writes what I do. Work matters. We wouldn’t have fiction without it.
Well said, Benjamin! I would add that many writers took their inspiration from their day jobs. Think of Hank Phillippi Ryan, a news broadcaster, and Steve Almond, an MD. The late Dick Francis made his reputation (and scads of money) off his career as a jockey.
I think there are two very valid perspectives at play in this conversation:
1. Writing, and only writing, is a goal for many — but should it be? Probably not. (Which is basically what you’re saying too, I think.)
2. Our hyper-capitalist society pushes most people well beyond healthy limits in their jobs.
Both of these ideas have weighed on me for years now. I think we all have to ping-pong around them and try to find the best situation we can. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for this post, I have struggled with finding enough time to write fiction for many years. Since graduating from college, I have always worked full-time jobs that were mentally taxing. I have been able to complete two novels in the past `15 years by taking advantage of brief bursts of creativity. My second novel started as a NaNoWriMo project and then blossomed into a larger, fuller novel. Unfortunately, these creative outbursts have been few and far between. It’s easy to get out of the daily writing habit when work and family pressures intrude. Now that I am semi-retired I hope I can get back into a regular writing routine. Thanks again for these insights and all the best to you.
I was one of those 5 a.m. writers–I wrote two novels that way. It worked for me. My mind was fresh and clear and I could just open the floodgates and narrative brewed during the previous day and night would be there. However, I do prefer writing at more sane hours these days.
You raise thought-provoking questions. I’m retired, but when I taught undergraduates, I had the summers to write full-time. It’s the only way I got much done. To be completely honest, I don’t think most businesses outside marketing/advertising would gain much by hiring fiction writers. In fact, I wouldn’t hire a serious fiction writer: their loyalties would almost certainly be divided, and as you say, that would be bad for “productivity.”
Congratulations on your publishing success, Rheea, and welcome to the REAL world of the average writer. In the late 1980s, I attended a writers’ conference in Dallas, Texas where one older gentleman speaker gave a solid piece of advice to aspiring scribes: “Get money.” I’ve been trying ever since.
Congratulations on your first novel, Rheea, and for landing a job that sounds rewarding on many levels.
Many sorts of jobs benefit from the skills that fiction (and nonfiction) writers have gained. My day job as an engineer required equal amounts of tinkering with things and writing: reports, plans, training materials, maintenance manuals, proposals for new work, etc. My grasp of structure, grammar, spelling, sentence variety, etc. gave me a leg up, and I often found myself coaching my non-writer peers who struggled to put their knowledge on paper.
Those years of technical writing actually helped my fiction writing. They taught me to consider the readers (mine were almost all non-technical) in terms of how to convey information such that it was interesting, consistent, and clear. They forced me into the daily habit of writing and accustomed me to being critiqued–every document went through multiple rounds of reviews–and to revising (and revising and revising).
And the work was not only interesting in itself, but lucrative enough that once my kids left home, I was able to reduce my time to just enough hours to get benefits, thus giving me one free day a week for writing. I’m retired from that job now, but am grateful for it and the security it provided, not just for my children, but also for my remaining years.
I hope that you enjoy your new job and find a balance that works for you.