Working to Write

Paradoxy has been dark for many weeks over the holidays -- but not necessarily because of the holidays. My news is: I've accepted a full-time editorial job in the education industry. And what does this mean for my fiction-writing schedule -- or my blogging schedule -- you might ask?

Got to get up early in the mornin'

It's an interesting conundrum: how to make a living while investing in your fiction writing career. I personally know one young adult author who, after signing a three-book contract with an excellent Y/A publisher, is back to looking for full-time work. The common advice: Don't quit your day job...just yet applies even to writers with a signed contract in hand. According to lit agent Jessica Faust, fewer than ten percent of fiction writers make a living solely by writing books.

I was lucky: After I left my job in journalism, I had enough contract and teaching piecework to get by while I wrote one novel and drafted the second (which took roughly just a bit over a year). That open year feels like the running start you take before making a huge leap. I've got traction. I fully intend to keep writing fiction even while I'm working full time -- but I also accept that the pages may come a lot slower. 

Here's the good news:
*Holding a day job might give you cool ideas to use in your fiction. Interpersonal relations, real world conflict, the kinds of issues that might not cross your solitary writing desk otherwise.
*Holding a day job takes the pressure off. You might not feel quite so desperate, or send out that query before your novel is ready.
*Money. It doesn't buy happiness. But it can sure purchase a piece of it.


How do you do it? 

So how, my bloggy buddies, do you deal with bringing home the bacon while you're penning your Great American Novel? Are you starving in a garret, or getting up at 4:30 to toss off a few pages before you hit the commute? Or, like Wallace Stevens or William Carlos Williams, do you just compose poems in your head on the train home in the evening? I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

PS: Henceforth, I'll be back to blogging here twice a week.