I just got out of LONG early morning meeting and before I start on my journey of continuing to learn this new skill for my job, I read an interesting post, In Good Company by good writer friend Paula Chase.

She was talking about the reality of having a full time job and balancing it with writing. It’s a precarious balance indeed. She had a link to an essay, Working the Double Shift by Emily St. John Mandel.

Here’s an excerpt from a writer interviewed in the essay, Elise Blackwell, that spurned agreement with me:

“Yet office work and even professional writing/journalism can be deadly, using up a writer’s energy with similar but less creative tasks. It’s hard to stare at a computer screen for 8 or 9 hours and then go home and compose on computer (which is how I mostly write).”

This is true for me. In my day job, I’m a technical writer, a system analyst, and at times even a software engineer. Although the nature of my job is very geeky and technical in nature, it does require a lot of face time with the computer screen. But in other ways, it has actually helped my writing—as far as being concise and keeping my grammatical skills on point. But it is an issue. Especially now since I’m working 12-14 hours a day.

Then, of course you can also use the day job as an excuse for not writing.

“Awful to not have time to write because of your job. We’ve all been there. But how much worse would it be to have time to write, and yet not be able to? [...] I suspect that any number of writers depend on their day jobs in this manner, whether we’re conscious of it or not: it’s true that your job prevents you from writing, by virtue of the fact that it takes up your time, but it’s also something to hide behind when the writing isn’t going well.”

But most of all, quitting the day job and “writing full-time” would not be all roses and caviar as many writers who do this can testify. It’s still hard work. Sort of liking changing jobs rather than just quitting one.

You should definitely go and check out the full essay.