As I neared college graduation 6 months ago, I was most excited about the prospect of being able to spend my free time reading and writing for leisure. Although I work a minimum of 40 hours per week at a pretty typical office job (and spend another 5 hours per week on my commute), I figured I’d have an abundance of free time to work on all my passion projects (poetry, blogging, reviewing, reading, etc, etc). But there are a couple of things that make the day job/night writer thing a bit tricky.
(1) Once you leave college, no one will hold you accountable for doing your work. Despite how badly I wanted to write, it took me months to sit down and discipline myself to work hard on a regular (ie. daily) basis. It’s still a struggle. It’ll probably always be a struggle. You want to write? Then sit down (or stand, whatever) and WRITE. Seriously, go do it right now.
And (2), no matter how hard you were able to work yourself in college, you’ll likely need to change your ways once you adjust to the daily grind. In college, I regularly functioned on a few hours of sleep. Because college offers such a flexible schedule and (in comparison to corporate life) is incredibly laid back, it’s possible to get three hours of sleep, roll out of bed, and still function perfectly fine during Advanced Shakespeare. But in the “real world,” I have to wake up out 6:15 each morning, guzzle coffee, don my dress slacks, manage my hair, and be alert enough to, at a minimum, reasonably operate a computer for 8 straight hours. It’s an unnatural schedule, and more taxing than it sounds.
If you want to work all day, and spend your nights writing, you need to hold yourself accountable. I set reasonable goals for myself (ones that I’m capable of accomplishing, and that still allow me to get at least 5 or 6 hours of sleep). Some reasonable goals I try to follow:
- Publish one blog post each Tuesday (a new goal!)
- Write 2-3 articles per month
- Write one book review per month
- Read 2 books per month
- Write every day, primarily focusing on poetry
These goals are reasonable. They give me some flexibility, because although I strive to write every day, I allow myself to write in different styles and genres. Nothing is off limits. Some days I work on my poetry, some days on a research paper, and other days on a blog post. I give myself some deadlines to work with, I put them in my calendar, and I commit to them. In fact, right now I’m missing out on watching a comedy with my family to write this blog post. After all, my calendar says “Writing Life and the 9 to 5,” so duty calls. I find it helpful to write my “assignment” directly on my calendar instead of simply writing “blog due.” Being specific about what I want to accomplish each Tuesday gives me a gentle reminder of what I want to write about, and allows me to brainstorm throughout the week.
I have long-term goals too, things like getting published in literary magazines, blogging for a literary site, writing a book, recording an audio book, becoming a poetry editor, etc, etc, etc. but I’ve found that it’s best to start with manageable goals that will help me to accomplish these bigger ones in the future.
My point is that working full time and finding time to establish yourself as a writer is no easy task, but many people do it, and they do it with kids, with extensive household responsibilities, and with far more distractions than I’ll ever have. So what’s my excuse? The goal is to someday (someday, someday, someday) be able to write full time, but for now, I’m working hard, paying my bills, and always, always writing.
Dana Johnson 