How to write with a day job

In 2013, I graduated from college, went to Clarion, and started my first full-time job. I also sold my first short story at a professional rate ($0.06/word, at the time). So the start of my "professional" publishing career coincided with the start of my tech career. Since then, I've always held a full-time job, with three exceptions:

• Six months in 2018 before grad school
• Grad school itself (August 2018 to May 2020), though arguably being a full-time student is similar to work (I know MBAs get flack for partying, but I did actually study a lot, and my program is strict about classroom attendance).
• A three-month stretch right after grad school, in early covid times, when I was furiously job hunting

So depending on how you count it, I've pursued writing alongside full time work for 13 or 11 years. This isn't the post where I expound on my day job, but one thing I'll say is it isn't particularly chill (I got asked this once, by a student). It's definitely not surgery, but it's also not the kind of job where I can take it easy, at least based on where and how I like to work. It is mentally draining, it does follow me home sometimes, and the hours have fluctuated between 40-60 a week (the latter mostly while I was at start-ups).

I know I give a lot of advice for someone not particularly confident about giving advice, but on this topic I do have strong opinions, because I've done it for so long. I made a Twitter thread about it back in 2023, so consider this the updated version. Of course, context is everything—my takes may not apply to your situation.

The dilemma

This article is probably of particular interest to two types of people:

1. Someone who wants to write but hasn't given it enough time. You want a creative practice, it's important to you, but you've also got a career that eats up your schedule. Spending time on writing is weird, because you're not sure how it to justify it to people around you or maybe even yourself.
2. A writer who feels the squeezing, desperate pressure of making the writing thing work. Regardless of how you feel about your day job, part of you resents that it takes you away from writing. In an ideal world you'd focus on writing full time. You wonder: if I wasn't also doing X, how much better could my writing be? Alas. You need to feed yourself, and pay for living expenses and [insert Z obligations]. And writing doesn't pay the bills.

I've had a writing practice since I was young, so I've never exactly been 1, but I've privileged my tech career pretty much as long as I've had it. I've been 2 a lot of the time. And the thing about 2 is: this isn't the post where I tell you to quit your job. If quitting is a legitimate option (ie, you objectively do not need to keep working because there's some solution to your money needs), hey, it might be worth trying. But if it's an option and you're not taking it, there's probably some meaningful reason why.

The assumption I'm making is that you need to keep the day job (or whatever activity is your day job equivalent). How do you do that and pursue writing seriously at the same time?

The advice

1. Write when you can.

Here's an exchange I have every now and then when someone finds out about my dual writing and tech career.

Them: I really want to write! But it's so hard to find time to write with a full time job.

Me: That's awesome. I love writing and it's so meaningful. It really is hard though. It takes a lot of time. When I was working on my novel I wrote 3 or 4 days a week after dinner, and then usually one weekend day.

Them: I wish I could do that. But [insert reasonable reason here: your day job is 60 hours a week, you're taking care of a family member, etc].

Look. Your reasonable reason is reasonable. I'm not going to push back on it. Time is a fixed quantity. There are only so many hours in the day. Unfortunately, writing requires time (and usually lots of it). If you don't make the time, it simply won't happen.

I can't multi-task writing. Maybe some folks can, but I can't. It requires all of my focus. That means when I'm writing, I'm not doing something else. If I have to work, I can't write. If I'm meeting someone or doing chores or poking around on the internet, I can't write.

So ask yourself: can you make the time to write? If you're being completely honest: is there a pocket in your day, week, month where you could? How long is it? What are you currently filling that time with, and how would you feel about swapping that with writing?

One practical way to answer this question of "when" is to track your time over a normal week or two. Record what you spend your days doing. Where your time goes. Try not to judge yourself, or do things differently than you normally would. Just go about your week, see where your time goes, and determine: do you really not have the time? Not even for 30 minutes once a week?

If you've looked at your calendar and you've been honest with yourself and you don't have the time to write...then you can't write. There have been periods in my life when I couldn't either. When school or work or life was too much and I simply couldn't, logistically or energy-wise. This is where I say: either that's a season, and it passes (ex. grad school applications; hunting for a new job; you have a newborn; it's busy season at work).

Or: you actually need to make some kind of change in your life. If you seriously want to spend time writing. Because you need time to do it, and your life as it stands now doesn't permit that. If you can't or don't want to make that change, then writing isn't in the cards for you until you fix that.

2. Consider yourself and your situation. Adapt accordingly.

Being deeply honest with yourself is critical for writing to work in the long term.

I am not a morning person. I've never been. I get energized at like 11pm. Many people force themselves to become morning people so that they can write. They get their 1-2 hours in before work starts or their kids wake up.

During covid, I was a morning writer for over a year. It was great! I had accountability and a routine and I was extremely productive! Then I switched jobs, moved cities, and morning writing no longer worked for me. After some trial and error, I went back to writing in the evenings. I missed morning writing. It felt very healthful; I did a ton of good work during it. But after a few attempts, I had to accept that a different time suited my new circumstances better.

You have to find the routine, timing, set-up that works. And accept that it might change. It is possible to shift your preferences and habits over time, with focused effort. But you can also adjust writing to what's more natural.

Don't know what works for you? Experiment and record how you feel, and how productive you are. Try morning and night writing. Lunch hour writing. Weekday vs weekend writing. Vary where you write. Don't expect to just know; if you're stuck and things aren't working, try something different.

3. Use your weekends.

I worked at an early stage start-up for 4.5 years, and I sometimes had time at the end of the day, but I rarely had energy. The job was too draining, especially when I was doing customer service. So I used my weekends. I was primarily writing short fiction then, so I could do bursts of extended writing for several hours, once a week.

Was it a sacrifice? Yeah, sometimes. Especially in the year I lived in London, and wanted to see more of the city. Another challenge is other people are more free during weekends, so they might expect more of your time. I once turned down weekend plans, and a friend said, "Why do you have to spend so much time writing? You should have more fun."

I get her perspective. Writing is often not fun—I do complain a lot about it! But the tradeoff was worth it to me. I've calmed down on this—spending time with people is important—but if weekends are the only time you have, you may need to give up part of them.

4. Give yourself permission (because no one else will).

We've established that writing demands a lot of time. It's also hard work.

The thing is, from the outside, it often just looks like fucking around on your computer. (And if you're like me, for about 20-30% of your "writing time," you probably are.) Writing isn't like going to the gym, or painting, or reading a book. It's not like learning to play an instrument. And writing is something everyone does. It's an act people are familiar with; mechanically, it doesn't have mystery, or look impressive.

Writing often doesn't have a visible, tangible outcome. And the "easily understood" outcome, publication, takes forever and might never arrive. I know some people like sharing their writing with friends and family, but I've never been the type. (Even once it's published, I'd rather mention it and flee.) So I get how it begs the question: what are you doing with all that time?

I've long been a fan of Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet, where he essentially says, write if you can't not write. I believe this. Writing is too hard and unrewarding otherwise. It can very often feel like wasting time.

If you let that message echo in your head too much—if you let the guilt and questioning get too bad—writing won't happen. You have to give yourself permission. You have to take it seriously. If you don't, everyone else will treat your writing time as unserious, and it'll evaporate immediately.

5. When you're writing, focus on writing.

It's already agony to make the time. If you sit down to write and don't get any work done because you can't focus, you've lost the time.

I've already admitted that I do a lot of futzing in a writing session. So I bake that in. Whatever time I've got reserved for the work, I know I'll lose some of it to my phone or my email or a sudden desire to do chores. But I have to exert control at some point. Keep to the task at hand, which is basically putting one word after another, repeatedly. (To be clear, a writing session doesn't have to be pure drafting. It can be reading, editing, brainstorming, etc. That all counts.)

Twenty minutes of focused writing can lead to the same or better results than two hours. The quality of writing time, not just quantity, matters.

Three practical tips for improving focus:

• Use a timer. I deploy this one as needed. Even if I don't get through the whole alloted time without drifting, it usually gets me somewhere.
• Work in public, like a coffee shop or library. When I struggle with productivity, writing in public can be very helpful. It means I can't just go to YouTube and start watching kpop. Or reading fic on Ao3. Sometimes I don't even connect to the internet. It's a great forcing function.
• Write by hand. I do this when nothing else works, and it's surprisingly effective.

6. Take a class, or sign up for a workshop.

Sometimes I'm unable to listen to myself. But I can never ignore a teacher. If an instructor gives me homework, I will do it, on time, as prescribed.

When I first moved to the US and was somewhat depressed and uninspired, taking creative writing courses to fulfill my English minor kept me writing. At Clarion, I produced seven new stories (two for the application and five during), four of which are in my collection. In my second year of grad school I took two workshops: short fiction in the fall, and advanced poetry in the spring. It didn't count towards my degree, so I overloaded units both quarters, but it was worth it. And these days I will take almost any writing workshop Garth Greenwell teaches, simply because I love how he thinks about writing.

Paying for something makes you more likely to commit to it. You've put in the money—now put in the time, to get your money's worth. It's also more easily understood by others. "I have a writing class on Monday" is more defensible than "I'm going to write for two hours on Monday."

7. Get reinforcements. Find someone else who'll push you to keep writing.

An alternative (or addition) to taking a class is having a writing group. This can be a critique group. It can also be a working group (you write together, at the same time), an accountability group (you promise each other you'll write, then make good on that promise), or even a 'shooting the shit about writing' group (you discuss what's going on with your work, publishing journey, etc).

You don't need a group, though. Even one other person is enough. For a few years in the Bay Area I sustained a poetry practice by meeting up with one friend in Panera every few weeks, after work. We'd write together, and talk about poems.

Writing is hard and lonely. It helps to have even one person who understands what you're trying to do, who takes it seriously, who can encourage you to stay the course when you're flagging. Non-writer support is great too, but it makes a difference to have at least one person working alongside you.

I talk more about building community in this older post. It's dated, but a lot of it still holds.

8. Writing takes a lot of energy. Do what you can to preserve and increase your energy.

Time is useless if you don't have energy. Writing requires focus and constant decision making. If your brain is a pile of mush, or you're constantly falling asleep in front of your document, you'll struggle to be productive. Sometimes it's a matter of getting enough rest. I suspect this is another reason why morning writing is so popular; your brain is still fresh, and presumably your body has just come off several hours of sleep.

Improving this will depend on your own circumstances and what you can shift. Here are some things I've done to manage my own energy:

• I don't cook a lot, because I'm slow. For lunch I pick up food, eat leftovers, or have a weekly meal delivery. I currently live with my sibling, who cooks most of our dinners (I clean up and do other chores instead). When I do cook, it's fast and easy: fried tofu, canned tuna, instant pot curry. I'm trying to get better, but when I'm in intense writing periods this isn't a good use of my time.
• I do chores on the same days every week to reduce decision fatigue. I listen to audiobooks during them, to catch up on my reading.
• I automate my bills and have good systems in place for money hygiene.
• I learn something new, or spend time with a different skill or hobby. Although this eats into my free time, it gives me energy. It reminds me to be curious and have beginner's mind. It also teaches me things that sometimes carry over into writing.
• These days, I try to take rest and health seriously. For most of my life I deprioritized health in favor of school, work, and writing. But over time, I've found that staying physically healthy helps my brain stay healthier too, which helps my writing. I started taking regular medication for my atopic dermatitis, after years of manually dealing with awful flare-ups. When I get sick I prioritize recovery. In general, I try to eat more mindfully, exercise weekly, and walk outside for at least a half hour daily.
• I've held a remote job since 2020. Not having to commute gives me more time to write. It's likely I'll have to work in-person again in future; I was grandfathered into a remote-friendly covid policy, but my industry is trending back to in-person. While I have this particular benefit, though, I'm using it.

I know a lot of the things I've described either cost money or aren't fully within your control. Again, the idea is more to consider if there's anything you can do, within your own circumstances, to build up your energy reserves.

9. Fill your well of inspiration.

I find it very difficult to create when I don't have good art alive inside me. The ideas aren't there and I don't feel curious. If writing feels like squeezing blood from a rock, that's usually a sign that my brain is empty, or overloaded with work, or has too much slop in it, and I need to fill it with art and beauty and questions again.

You'll need to experiment with what recharges the thoughtfulness in your brain. Some things that work for me:

• Visiting galleries and museums. I like to bring a notebook and jot down observations or phrases from the artworks' descriptions.
• Listening to music. Learning to play a new song on the ukulele; sometimes this is the first time I'll actually pay attention to lyrics. If I really like a song I'll look for acoustic covers because I like to hear other renditions.
• Seeing a live show once in a while: a musical, a stage play, a concert. It's eye-opening to witness the artistry of people in different mediums, think about the choices they're making, see how the audience reacts.
• Playing a videogame. Expedition33, Metaphor Re:Fantazio, and Blue Prince all did that for me last year—made me go oh! at their storytelling choices, how gameplay and art and design all come together to create that experience.
• Watching a movie. A good TV show works too, though the sustained attention a movie requires feels different.
• Having a really, really good conversation with a friend. Especially about art they've recently enjoyed.
• Browsing a bookstore. I feel inspired and also kinda jealous, and it makes me want to do my own work.
• Reading.

At some point, it helps to consume art at the level you're trying to create. There's a difference between consuming art and entertainment. I don't mean entertainment in a bad way, and it's subjective, but I know when the fanfic I'm reading is stretching my prose and teaching me new things about story, versus just comforting or amusing me. Both have their uses and both are worth my time, but one is more likely to help me produce my own work, and it's usually the one that's more difficult, and thus less enticing when I'm tired. Having the balance, not always picking the lighter or easier choice, helps when I'm trying to generate work or improve my craft.

Aaaaand that's all I've got. The most important pieces are 1, 2, and 4. Though I can't stress how willpower alone isn't enough. Sometimes there are things going on in your life that make it impossible, despite how much you want it. Maybe objectively you could make the time, but the effort is too painful, or would demand too much of you. If that's the case, take care of whatever that is, first.

When I was applying for grad school and had a very draining day job situation, something had to go. I decided, at least until applications were done, that I'd stop writing. I burnt out. I missed writing terribly, and felt like a hollow husk by the end, but I got writing back eventually. In my first year of the MBA program I couldn't make the time either, which is why I overloaded with writing classes my second year: to force myself.

You have to balance both brutal honesty and self-kindness. Sometimes writing is worse for your mental health, because of the negative self-talk, pressure, anxiety. And sometimes writing is the cure, the thing that gets you out of that dark place. Sometimes your work project really is the worst, and you simply have to lock in for the rest of the quarter and survive it. And sometimes, despite how soul-suckingly difficult work is, you do in fact still have 90 minutes on Thursday after dinner, and using that time for writing will make you feel alive and proud of yourself, which in turn helps you survive.

There isn't an alternative to doing the work. Spending the time, the energy (not that writing is never energizing. Sometimes it is). I've used the word thankless on this task more than once, in the privacy of my own agony. But there's a reason I've kept at it all this time. Despite whatever angst writing has given me, it's also given me joy and meaning and growth, in a way few things in my life have come close to.

If you make a sincere effort with writing, it will usually pay off. Writing has given me back what I've given it. If you simply can't make space for it now, don't worry. It will still be there, available to you, when you can. Trust in that, and don't be too hard on yourself.

Quick Hits

• Podcast: Flublishing. Two agents candidly cover industry topics, from an agent's perspective.
• Newsletter: Scratch. Honest, unfiltered, sometimes difficult conversations about writing and making a living. The book by Manjula Martin is great too.
• This fried tofu recipe that I make at least every other week these days. If you want the tofu to be crispier, you can rip it instead of slicing it; the uneven shape allows for more crunch.
• The novel revision class with Laura van den Berg that I mentioned before will be run again this August.

To keep track of all the writing and publishing related recommendations, I've now set up a resources page. 😄

Apologies for missing the last two months! Life was life-ing. I am decelerating a bit, and hope to be back on schedule this summer. (With more personal stuff to share, if I feel like it!)

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