When Writing Isn't Your Day Job by Guest Blogger Nancy Kimball

The top ten ways to know you’re a writer operating in a traditional day job:

10. You’re tempted by the plethora of sticky notes in every size and color in the supply cabinet.

9. You find yourself critiquing interoffice memos.

8. Unsolicited sales calls are opportunities to practice your elevator pitch.

7. The mail clerk already knows the Amazon box is for you.

6. A guest storms out on his or her date at one of your tables and immediately you catalog the precise manner in which they exit, how the abandoned guest reacts and jot everything down on your order pad.

5. Your co-worker is mid-sip of a Diet Coke when you ask if he or she thinks someone could inject poison into a soda can undetected using only household objects.

4. The ill-tempered child among your charges has been drowned, kidnapped, or eaten by alligators in your head more times than your favorite jeans have been washed.

3. Social media lockouts on the office computers lead your list of deal-breakers for a new job, ahead of unisex restrooms and no health insurance.

2. You can’t understand why human resources denied your maternity leave request for your new book release.

1. You’re furious when you learn box lunches will be brought in for the all-day meeting because now they’ve taken the lunch hour hostage on a day you need to be in Seekerville!

CONFESSION: I constantly battle word count envy.

I know it’s completely unfair to believe every writer who puts up a daily word count number that looks like the price of a good used car must have eight to ten uninterrupted hours a day to write. That doesn’t mean I don’t do it, just that I know it’s unfair when I do. Even more unfair is to blame my day job for why the work in process isn’t finished or I didn’t submit to that contest.

If you’re a writer with a regular day job like me, you already know the frustrations of feeling like you’d already be published if it weren’t for your day job taking all your time up and frying your brain every day.

There are plenty of time management resources available to you, including eleven great posts here on Seekerville (They’re under the “time management” label of the archives to the right side. Scroll down later.)

What I’d like to share is specific ways to balance your writer life with making a living until the glorious day your writing is your day job. Speak it in faith, baby!

·         Be fair to your employer. Don’t steal time or supplies.

No one gets paid just to show up and that pack of post-its or that print job you could do at the office for ‘free’ instead of using half a cartridge on the printer at home is stealing. If God saying not to weren’t enough, or you think it’s so small no one would care, ask yourself how you would feel if one of your crit partners took three sentences out of your entire manuscript and put them in theirs. If there’s work to be done, especially time sensitive tasks and assignments, devote yourself fully until it’s finished or you’re at a strong stopping point with measureable progress behind you. Then as a reward, check your personal e-mail or catch up on the comments in Seekerville.

When you get an amazing plot or character idea or revelation in the middle of something, don’t worry about losing it. If you aren’t going to be able to remember it on your lunch break, the drive home, or when you sit down to write next, it’s not as good as you think it is.

·         Be realistic and work within your limitations. Sometimes the writing wins.

The day after I send a query, I’m checking my personal e-mail every fifteen minutes. That doesn’t mean I allow myself to click on every new e-mail that isn’t from the agent or publisher I’m hoping to see in my inbox. Or when I see I’ve had a critique returned, I look at it right away rather than try to go back to work distracted wondering what my critter thought of that section. I briefly skim the comments to satisfy my need for immediacy and then return to work as soon as possible. This has the added benefit of letting any emotion dissipate and being able to objectively evaluate that same feedback later
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·         Don’t fight brain fatigue. Trying to write when the day job drained you is counterproductive.

            For me, this is the hardest thing about trying to write with a day job. Some days the stress of the job literally fries my brain. So even though I have two hours of writing time scheduled after dinner, so few synapses are going to fire if I manage to crank out a few hundred words, they’ll be terrible. More likely is that even though I know exactly how this scene should go it’s not going to make it to the screen and I’ll only become more angry and bitter about my day job interfering with my writing.

This is not the time to try to write—or critique. Trust me. I learned both the hard way.

Instead of forcing myself to try to engage what’s left of my brain, I redirect the time. Check and make social media updates, read whatever is on top of the to-be read pile or if it’s been a really, really bad day I grab milk and cookies and retreat to one of my comfort reads. You know the ones that never leave the nightstand and have dog-eared pages, a cover that never quite closes anymore and cracks in the spine at your favorite parts. Don’t feel like this is wasted writing time. Make it author rejuvenation time and your job performance and writing will thank you for it the next day.

Nancy Kimball is an award-winning author of Epic Historical Heroes who makes her home in Houston, Texas. She knows way more about gladiators and ancient Roman history than is normal, even for a writer. When she is in full-on writer mode, a scented candle is burning nearby and Christian rock is blaring in her headphones. At the day job, she is blessed to be an executive and personal assistant to three incredible bosses who support and encourage her writing.  You can keep up with her crazy or just see what’s in the fridge over at www.nancykimball.blogspot.com

To share the love, she’s giving away a reader/writer retreat package containing a $10 itunes gift card, a $10 Barnes & Noble gift card, and a scented jar candle from her PartyLite stash.