The housework thing worked! I realized as I was cleaning the kitchen and later folding laundry that my original plan for the plot was the right one and I didn’t need to downgrade it. Instead, I managed to come up with something even bigger that I could do in later books. Since what I want to do with this book is make something too good to ignore, that will make publishers sit up and beg and then remember that they’re publishing me, I don’t want to leave anything in reserve. I need to go as big as possible in book 1, then top it in book 2

So, now I have a plot and a moderately clean kitchen and lots of clean laundry.

There’s still a bit more subject matter research to do to fine-tune the plot, and then a bit of hands-on research. And my living room needs a bit more tidying.

Someone asked the question on Twitter yesterday, what would you do if money was no object and you had six months without needing to write? I figured I’d spend the first month getting my house in order — finishing all the decluttering and organizing and tackling all the home improvement projects I’ve been putting off so I could have my environment just right. Then I think I’d spend the next five months alternating between travel and digging into various arts/crafts activities. I don’t like being away from home for extended periods, so I probably wouldn’t have a trip longer than two weeks, and then I’d want a few weeks at home before traveling again. During those home times I’d sew, dig into music, maybe do some local exploring, and spend a lot of time reading. Writing would still probably happen, but it would be nice to be able to just write when I wanted to and when an idea struck me rather than spending all my time feeling like I should be writing. It’s like being in school and always feeling like I should be studying.

If I wasn’t allowed to write at all during this sabbatical, I suspect I’d be eager to dive back into it when the time was up because I’d be drowning in ideas.

But since a six-month sabbatical isn’t in the cards for me anytime soon, off to write I go.

After writing yesterday’s post, I had more thoughts about the do/don’t quit your day job argument and why I have such mixed feelings.

One big thing that I don’t think most people dreaming of being a full-time writer realize is that having more time to write probably won’t result in making more money from writing (with some exceptions). That’s because you’ll be fortunate to get one publishing slot a year, which means that if you can write one book a year while having a full-time job, you’ll be able to write as fast as they can publish you, so writing more won’t do you much good. Maybe, if you’re really lucky/good/successful, you might get two slots a year, like if you do a spinoff series (which requires the initial books to be successful), or if you write two different kinds of books, like adult and YA. The big exception is category romance, where the top writers can get four or more books a year published. And, of course, with self publishing you can publish whatever you write. Otherwise, don’t count on being able to boost your writing income by all that much by quitting your day job and having more time to write.

The main reason to quit your day job is for physical, mental, and emotional health. You may be able to keep up with the publishing pace while having a day job, but once you’re writing for publication, writing-related activities will eat up more time, and that time will have to come out of either your free time or time you previously used for writing. There are editorial revisions, copyedits, galley proofs, reviewing cover copy, researching ideas for covers. When the book comes out, you may be asked to write guest columns or blog posts and do interviews. You may be asked to read books to provide promotional blurbs. At some point, when you’re having to devote most of your waking hours to either your day job or your writing job and you’re even using your vacation days for writing conferences, conventions, travel to booksignings, or writing when you’re on deadline, something’s going to give. Your relationships may suffer. Your health may suffer if you’re not getting enough exercise or sleep.

And your work may suffer. That, I think, is the main argument for quitting a day job. You can’t write well when you’re burned out. If you’re not able to live life, if you don’t get to read for pleasure or do anything that isn’t work-related in some way, your creative well may empty and not be refilled. When you’re pressed for time, it’s harder to dig in as deeply as you probably should. For instance, right now I’m reading an entire book to research the backstory for the heroine of the book I’m plotting. Most of what I learn may not even show up in the book other than in the first few pages (the “ordinary world” part of the story), but I think it will help me get into that mindset and flesh out the character. Writing full time, I can get through this book in two days while also doing other work. If I were fitting this in around a day job, it would be a week’s worth of reading. It probably wouldn’t be worth a week of writing time to read this book. That might not make a huge difference in the finished book, but I think it will be richer from having done this.

Leaving the day job means that you have time for a life in addition to work, and you aren’t as pressed for time to work, so you can dig into your work to make it even better. You can also deal with more of the business stuff without sacrificing writing time.

But you can’t relax and enjoy the benefits of not having a day job if you’re worried about finances, which is why it’s not a step to take lightly. It’s also not an all-or-nothing situation. My last two years of my day job, I worked out a deal with my boss to telecommute and work semi-full time (I still counted as a full-time employee for benefits, but I was working 30 hours a week, and being paid part-time meant I had a hard stop on the number of hours I could work, so it drastically cut my working time). I had reached the point of burnout because my job had become something like 60 hours a week with a lot of travel, and I wasn’t able to get any writing at all done even though I had publishers asking to see something from me. I broke down in tears in a staff meeting when we were allocating client work and it came down to me being scheduled for more than 200 billable hours in a month. I actually tried to quit then, but my boss talked me into staying and worked out a way for me to stay but also have time to write. Something like that is worth a shot. Depending on your commute, just getting to telecommute a few days a week could free up hours of time. If you’re making money from publishing, you may be able to afford to take a pay cut in exchange for cutting a day of work a week or going to part time. There’s also freelancing, temping, and contract work.

Mostly, it boils down to what allows you to be both sane and reasonably financially secure. I guess my measure of when to quit the day job would be when you’ve got at least two years of living expenses saved up and when you feel like something has to give — when either your day job doesn’t allow you the time you need to write or you have no life other than work and writing. It’s a very individual thing and will depend on your family situation, your degree of introversion, how much you love (or hate) the day job, whether continuing that career is a viable thing, etc. Don’t let anyone tell you that you have to quit to have a career, but don’t let anyone scare you away from making a move that might save your sanity.

One of the big discussions going on in author Twitter, aside from the editor-turned-author who apparently faked his resume, the deaths of his entire family, and cancer in order to boost his career, is about something another author has said about authors needing to take the leap and quit their day jobs if they want to get ahead or write well, or something like that.

As a writer who hasn’t had a day job for 17 years, I have thoughts about that. My career probably falls into the category of “don’t do it this way” and isn’t at all typical.

In my case, quitting my day job wasn’t really a choice. I got laid off, and since at that time just about everyone in my field was getting laid off, the odds of me being able to get another job were slim. There were a lot of people competing for a very few available positions. One of my colleagues laid off on the same day took a couple of months to get a new job that was a step down from where she’d been and then got laid off from that job and the next job before she had to move to another city to get the next job (I think she’s on about her tenth job since then). I was in a terrible position to try to become a full-time novelist, since I hadn’t sold a book in years and the category line I’d been writing for had folded. I had an agent, but the book she’d submitted hadn’t sold and there had been no response on the follow up book (I later learned that she may not have actually submitted it, since editors she supposedly sent it to had no idea what I was talking about when I met them later, but that’s another story and I have a different agent now). I’d just come up with the idea for the book that became Enchanted, Inc., but hadn’t started writing it and had no idea whether there was even a market for it.

On the other hand, I’d already bought a house and had a relatively new car that I’d paid cash for, so I didn’t have to worry about being able to show employment for a credit check. I had a freelance writing gig that pretty much paid my mortgage. I had no other debts. I’d been saving money all along. I’m generally pretty frugal, so as I got raises, I maintained my old lifestyle and put the extra money in savings. I had my direct deposit set up to automatically put a chunk of my paycheck into savings. All the freelance money and any royalties or book advances went straight into savings. I’d been working for a division of my company that had previously been a company bought out by my company, which meant I got some profit-sharing bonuses as part of the buyout agreement, and all that went into savings. When I factored in my severance payment, I had about three years of living expenses saved up, not even counting my regular freelance gig. The day after I got laid off, before I’d even made any decisions about what to do, I started getting calls from former clients wanting to hire me as a freelancer. I had my first interview for a freelance assignment the Monday after I got laid off on Thursday. So, I didn’t really quit my day job to be a novelist. I got laid off from my day job and decided to freelance as a marketing communications writer to give myself the chance to try to be a novelist.

I did taper off on the freelance work after I started selling books, but I was able to keep that steady gig for the first ten years or so of freelancing. There have been years when I dipped into my savings, and there have been years when I added significantly to my savings. I’m lucky that I got a health insurance plan soon after I got laid off that’s grandfathered. It doesn’t contain all the ACA benefits, but most of those are benefits I don’t need and it’s significantly less expensive. We won’t even get into how ridiculous it is that healthcare is tied to employment. That’s an entirely different discussion.

That’s how I’ve made it work financially. How has it worked creatively? I don’t know that I write significantly more than I did when I had a full-time job. My daily word count when drafting is about double, but I don’t make myself work weekends now, while I did spend most of my weekends writing when I had a full-time job. Mostly what I gained was mental and emotional energy. I’m on the extreme end of the introvert scale, and going to an office where I spent the day around people utterly drained me. I would come home from work and fall asleep on the sofa even before dinner if I wasn’t careful. When I started writing seriously, my social life dwindled to nearly nothing because I didn’t have the energy to see people in my free time and still be able to write. Writing full-time gives me the chance to do something other than work and write. I still don’t have that active a social life, by choice, but I get out a fair amount, just due to choir, church, several social groups I’m involved in, etc. I have time for music, to read for pleasure, to exercise, to cook. I think I’m a lot healthier than when I was working all day in an office, then coming home and sitting at my desk after microwaving something for dinner. Not having a day job means I feel like I can breathe.

I do think that writing full-time improved the quality of my work. I feel like I have the time to dig deeper in developing stories and in editing/revision. I don’t think I could have managed what I do now with things like reading the last draft out loud. It would take me about a year or more to write a book like Rebel Mechanics if I had to do it part time because there’s just so much research involved. When I’m doing research for a book like that, I’m spending hours a day just reading. I suspect that if I were having to do it part-time, I would skimp on the amount of research and preparation. I can devote my brain all day to my story and characters, even if I’m not actively writing, and that’s something I couldn’t do when I spent the day at the office.

I don’t know how anyone could do the kind of promotion that’s necessary today with a full-time job. My books published while I was working were category romances, so they were only available for one month. There might have been an intense month of booksignings and message board posting, but then you were done once the book was off the shelf. Now books stay out there, and there’s social media, blogging, and all that. It’s nice not having to take vacation days to go to conventions or to travel for book events. I can accept gigs to speak at schools and libraries without fitting them into a work schedule.

I really don’t think I’d have the writing career I have today if I’d gone looking for — and found — another job instead of deciding to give writing full time a shot. I might never have written the books I’ve written. I’m not sure I’d have actually stuck with writing because I was so discouraged then that I was on the verge of giving up. Realizing that I had to make it work before I ran out of money was wonderfully motivating. I loved my freedom so much that the dread of going back to an office job made me very determined. I think it would have been easier to just give it up, work full-time (if I could have found a job), and use my free time for fun. I’d probably be more financially secure now, but I might also be utterly drained and unfulfilled. And then there’s the issue that there really weren’t jobs in my field and I hated my field. I probably would have had to try to change careers and start over in something else at a lower level and work my way back up.

What it boils down to is what works for you. Every person’s situation is different. Everyone’s tolerance of uncertainty is different. I know of a lot of people who have been far more productive — and successful — than I have while holding down demanding day jobs. But then I’m not sure I’d have managed to keep writing at all, other than maybe as a hobby, if I’d gone looking for a job when I got laid off, so I’d have been even less productive and successful. Then there are things you don’t control that can change your circumstances or alter your decisions. No one can say “you must do this!” and have it apply to everyone. I disagree with the guy saying you must quit your day job, but then I also disagree with all the people saying quitting a day job is a bad idea.