I fell in love with writing the day that I discovered that it was possible to move people with words. In my younger days I was extremely quiet and shy and writing became an important emotional outlet. As early as I can remember, there has been this aching inside of me to tell a story. As the years have progressed, this deep desire to tell a story has become a lifelong obsession to polish and perfect my craft. For almost two decades I have been juggling a full time job while writing books, poetry, and freelance articles. Although my goal has always been write full time, it’s taken me much longer than I had ever anticipated.
I made the decision in my mid-twenties that I didn’t want to make my living writing what someone else tells me to for eight hours a day, five days a week. My fear was that I would lose my passion for this thing of beauty that I love so much. So I found a job that wasn’t connected in any way with writing and I continued to write after hours, on my own time. Throughout the next twelve years, I published a few children’s books and collections of poetry while dabbling in short stories. I also was accepting regular commissions to do personalized poems for special occasions like weddings, anniversaries and such. A steady stream of small triumphs including the James Thurber Treat Prize in 2005 for my fable, “The Heiress and the Pea” (https://steemit.com/life/@ericvancewalton/the-heiress-and-the-pea) kept my dream alive. All the while, writing kept me sane. It is what kept me going through all of the many ups and downs of life.
Juggling a writing career and a full time job was manageable for a number of years. My fate changed about the time I began serious work on my first novel. About three months into the writing of Alarm Clock Dawn, my day job became more stressful and began to require more hours. I quickly found out that to produce anything of value in the way of long-fiction required three to four hour blocks of time. When you factor in a full-time job and commuting, this didn’t leave much time for anything else, including sleep. Luckily, I had an abundance of vacation time built up at work so I started taking week long blocks of time off to work on the novel uninterrupted. These days of freedom to structure my days as I pleased were one of the best gifts I had ever given myself. I crafted my ideal daily writing schedule and learned so much about the rhythms of my creative muse and even how to coax creativity when it waned. In regard to the latter, walking our dog in the fresh air never failed.
As my writing vacation came to a close, I always found myself feeling frustrated and depressed about having to put the freedom of this writer’s life back on the shelf again for an undetermined amount of time. I had this story locked inside of me that I wanted desperately to share with the world but my current life as it was didn’t allow me the time to do it. These weeks of writing were only a tease. They gave me only a taste of the ambrosia that I had been working so many years to achieve and only fueled my fire to transition from my day job even more.
This decision I made long ago to exist with a foot in both worlds has provided me with some of my greatest joys, as well as some of my deepest sorrows.
I am grateful for the fact that I can afford to eat, all of my bills are paid, my wife and I enjoy at least one vacation per year but there’s no doubt that my existence in each world has suffered due to this balancing act. Because I always felt as if my big break in writing was always just around the corner, I never focused on pursuing a career path in my daytime job. Ironically, I suspect that my writing career didn’t progress as quickly as it might have because I didn’t always devote the time or energy to necessary to make it fully blossom.
After finally publishing my first novel, Alarm Clock Dawn (https://www.amazon.com/Alarm-Clock-Dawn-Vance-Walton/dp/150851335X), in April of 2013 and as I began to write the sequel, Truth Is Stranger, there was a distinct quickening. My day job began to demand even more of my time, now fifty to sixty hours per week. I found myself much more tired than I should have been at age forty-two. It was almost as though the Universe was reminding me that, to achieve the kind of writer’s life I wanted, it was time to choose between being a “lifer” at my day job with a regular paycheck and benefits or the writer’s life. My readership on social media was growing exponentially and I was presented with the wonderful opportunity to write this book that you’re reading today. I was right on the cusp of something big, I could feel it.
It was at that precise moment that I decided to stop leaving so much of my future up to fate and rearrange my life to be more conducive to achieving the writer’s life I so desired. I began a conscious effort to redesign my life, and the pieces began to slowly fall into place. First, to allow more time to produce quality writing I realized that I needed a job that demanded less energy and hours. Although it took a few months, eventually I found a job that was perfect for this stage of my transition, it required less of my time and wasn’t nearly as stressful as the one I had before.
Even though my current job fits my situation right now, I make it a point to remind myself every day that it’s only a stepping stone and not to allow myself to get too comfortable. I now know that achieving my ideal writer’s life is the only thing that will bring complete satisfaction to my soul. I’m thankful for my day job but there’s absolutely no room in my dream for spending eight hours of my day in a cubicle working for someone else. There’s something highly attractive about working according to my own schedule and having the freedom to get up from the writing desk to take the dog for a walk if the mood strikes me, my beagle Amstel agrees.
In two years from now, my plan is to have fully transitioned out of my day job and I have set clear goals to achieve this.
My advice to writers who are contemplating a similar path is to be very honest with yourself about the kind of life you want to achieve. If you wish to write full time, you simply must set pragmatic goals of how and when you wish to accomplish this. Your plan of action must be your top priority, because time moves swiftly. Ask yourself first, where would you like to be in six months, in a year, in two years? Then it is just a matter of plotting a step-by-step course to get there. Leave as little to chance as possible. To chase after the writer’s life without a concrete plan is a costly mistake that is likely to end in wasted years, frustration, and sorrow.
If you have that aching deep inside of you to tell a story, you must kindle the fire of that passion and treat this gift of writing with the respect that it deserves. I guarantee you will make mistakes, but they’re not mistakes if you learn from them. Each time you stumble, dust yourself off and continue to hone your craft. Network with others in the business and keep pursuing your passion. If you stick to this course, one day you will get the great privilege of telling your story and the world will know your name. Behind the story of every great writer is a little smarts, a fair amount of luck and a lot of persistence.
The path to achieving a healthy balance on the journey to attaining the writer’s life consists of three elements:
A day job that provides a comfortable salary with adequate benefits but isn’t overly time consuming or mentally draining;
Sufficient time to produce quality writing; and
A fair amount of time for some kind of social life.
Finding the right mix of these three aspects that work for your own unique situation will allow you to achieve success as a writer much more quickly. Fine tuning this formula until you achieve the proper balance can be very frustrating at times but keep in mind this is only a means to an end. If this path to becoming a full time writer is approached with clear goals and discipline, it will provide a more effective and comfortable life than the traditional starving artist strategy.
Writers! Let me save you from making some of the same mistakes I have. I’ve been a writer for over twenty years and love to share what I’ve learned.
Check out my other Steemit articles about my struggles and triumphs with writing:
https://steemit.com/writing/@ericvancewalton/what-i-learned-from-writing-my-debut-novel
https://steemit.com/writing/@ericvancewalton/how-to-fail-miserably-as-a-writer-or-anything-else
https://steemit.com/writing/@ericvancewalton/writing-saved-my-life