Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I know an assortment of successful SF/fantasy authors. With three exceptions, all have day jobs they don't plan to give up.
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Dennis
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Brother, I can hear where you're coming from. Stephen King writes about the "day job" in his memoir,
On Writing:
"Writing courses and seminars do offer at least one undeniable benefit: in them, the desire to write fiction or poetry is taken seriously. For aspiring writers who have been looked upon with pitying condescension by their friends and relatives (“You better not quit your day job just yet!” is a popular
line, usually delivered with a hideous Bob’s-yer-uncle grin), this is a wonderful thing. In writing classes, if nowhere else, it is entirely permissible to spend large chunks of your time off in your own little dreamworld. Still—do you really need permission and a hall-pass to go there? Do you need someone to make you a paper badge with the word WRITER on it before you can believe you are one? God, I hope not."
Earlier in the book, King references the day job from a different angle:
"We do it for the music, but we also do it for the companionship. We like each other, and we like having a chance to talk sometimes about the real job, the day job people are always telling us not to quit. We are writers, and we never ask one another where we get our ideas; we know we don’t know."
At the time, King was in a band called The Rock Bottom Remainders, composed mostly of writers. King reminds us later that Anthony Trollope had a day job in the British postal service.
People go into investment banking for the money. They take up writing, or music, hopefully because they love it. In spite of the fact that society does not respect people for their imagination. Except a few chosen individuals.
For some unexplainable reason, King's book became available for download from a Spanish language site,
http://www.librosgratisweb.com/. Since this is a gray area in U.S. copyright law, I will not post the full link. Google has the actual location.