Balancing Work and Writing

[Steven Lake]

Greetings most venerated and gifted fellow pen smiths! I have a question. And this just comes from an observation in my own life. For those of you who have full time jobs (40hrs a week or more), as well as even possibly family and other things, how do you handle working your job and keeping up with your writing hobbies? I ask because I currently work 50+ hours a week (Five 10's a week or more) and yet still somehow manage to put out about 6k-12k words a week in writing, sometimes upwards of 20k over a week. It's kind of a balancing act between doing well at my job and still producing quality literature on my offtime. (writing is a relaxing hobby for me, so it's my stress reliever, and benefits others with the enjoyment of a good story!) In the end I'm wondering how you guys handle the balancing act between work and writing in your own lives.

[toddhicks209]

I just happen to work the equivalent of a full-time job through self employment and blend in book writing. I put in a little time of writing here and there and don't come close to your volume.

[gmw]

I've used the word "balance" quite a lot on this forum over the last few months, but balancing work and writing is where I really struggle.

My work fluctuates a lot, and this means the time available for writing fluctuates with it - but in the opposite direction, of course. Over the last few years I've had quite a lot of months that average out over 70 work hours per week - and I don't count the hours spent maintaining my own business and computer systems and so on.

I know from some of those that I interact with for my work that my work hours are not particularly unusual, so I always feel a bit ashamed when I grumble (but I do anyway). I also know from long experience that things might turn around at any time and leave me with very little work - so I don't really have much choice but to take it while it's available. Balance barely comes into it.

But I have, in the last few months, been trying to extract a bit more time for myself (and so my writing), despite continuing pressure for work. But it is difficult to do, and runs into a related problem...

A few years ago I was airing my grievances in this regard and Nancy Fulda observed:

It's a very strange thing, but programming seems to tug at the same creative wells as writing does. When I code intensively, my fiction output drops, and not just because of time constraints.

This certainly seems to match my experience.

But while programming tugs at the same creative resources, it doesn't fill the same need nor offer the same satisfactions, and so my compulsion to write sits frustrated until I can make time to get back to it.

All of which brings me to what you said about writing being a relaxing hobby. I wish I could say that was always true, but I can't. ... And it's all my own fault. I have no deadlines for my writing; it doesn't actually matter if it takes weeks or months or years or never. But it does matter to me.

It's why I can relate to the various, usually tongue-in-cheek (at least, ostensibly so), posts about being addicted to writing. I've had a taste of what it's like when the writing really starts working, and I want more! The fact that my work (the kind that actually puts food on the table) gets in the way of my getting more is very frustrating and keeps pushing the cycle of stress over my writing. It's quite silly. Intellectually I can see that very clearly, but changing how I feel about it is something else again.

... And then I add to it by spending time here on MobileRead complaining about it all. I can hear a tiny violin somewhere playing a sad tune just for me.

[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by toddhicks209

I just happen to work the equivalent of a full-time job through self employment and blend in book writing. I put in a little time of writing here and there and don't come close to your volume.

lol, well, volume on a rough draft isn't a problem for me. I can slam ideas down on paper fast when I'm first starting a story and, if creativity and time permit, I can burn out a 100k word novel in about two weeks. The crunch is when I do the editing and cleanup afterwards. That takes upwards of 6 months and countless passes through the book before it's to a level I'm happy with. But since there's really no really way to denote "productivity" in editing vs writing, as any number of things could snag you up and slow down progress, I like to use my rough draft writing speeds as a marker of book progress for the average person. That's why I quoted those numbers.

Originally Posted by gmw

A few years ago I was airing my grievances in this regard and Nancy Fulda observed:

This certainly seems to match my experience.

Yeah, that sounds a bit like me. I work as a systems administrator and my job every day consists of finding what broke, why it broke, what needs to be done to fix it, etc. Some of it involves coding, some of it involves outthinking the problem, or in some cases fellow malicious humans, etc. So I can completely relate to that experience. As such I do better writing work on my off days than I do on my off time during the week just because, by the time I get home I want nothing to do with any computer. I just come home, crawl in bed and crash till morning where I get up, rinse, repeat. haha. It's really only on my days off that I get any writing done, and not necessarily every week. Some weeks my weekends consist of just sitting around and letting the brain idle for a change. :P

But while programming tugs at the same creative resources, it doesn't fill the same need nor offer the same satisfactions, and so my compulsion to write sits frustrated until I can make time to get back to it.

Agreed. To me, programming is no different than systems or network administration. It's work, but it's not relaxing. It's probably the stress that comes from that struggle to perform. Oddly, for the brief time in which I tried to make a business out of my writing I found myself feeling the same things about my writing. But since switching to doing it entirely for fun and just giving away my books, it's again become a fun, relaxing, enjoyable hobby that helps me with decompressing after work.

... And then I add to it by spending time here on MobileRead complaining about it all. I can hear a tiny violin somewhere playing a sad tune just for me.

Preach it, brother! Preach it! I just wish I had the freetime anymore to be able to do that. I'm only here right now because I'm on my weekend. (I get Thurs and Friday each week as my days off. ^_^)

[gmw]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

[...] To me, programming is no different than systems or network administration. It's work, but it's not relaxing. [..]

Well, there is programming work involved in most systems and network administration, but for me, they feel most like short stories. I think that may be why I moved on to programming: I much prefer novels and epics. (Though, I do admit that designing a new network from scratch can be pretty epic.)

In my software development I can see a lot of similarities with my writing. Everything starts out quite nebulous. First there is the bright spark of "we need something like this", then imagining some of the major highlights involved in the work, and finally down to coding the details and making it all come together even though the code takes on a life of its own, with it's own design peculiarities, requiring things to fit together this way rather than that. (Not to mention the occasional major rewrite when you stuff up.)

The analogy carries even closer when I realise that there are some programming jobs that I particularly enjoy, such as when I'm exploring a new problem space and have lots to learn about the details (c.f. story ideas that can keep my attention beyond the first few pages of notes) versus those that are almost repeats of what I've seen or done before (c.f. story ideas that get abandoned as boring).

But the thing I like most about writing over programming is that there can be, eventually, an end to it, and that end is a tangible thing with a future*. Programming, on the other hand, has only one end: the great bit-bucket in the sky. The moment you stop actively working on a product it begins to die. If you're lucky(?) that death may be a long and drawn out one, with users scattered here and there still tenuously holding onto it as the best thing since sliced bread, but if you're no longer working on it then the final redundancy and demise is certain.

I have a product I've been developing for twenty years, and it is a very sad thing to know that it will never really be considered complete, and the day I retire and stop working on it - unless I can find a successor - will be the day that the product begins to die. Or it may catch a major ailment (like Pratchett's Small Gods, the users may stop believing in it) before I retire and have to be put out of its misery. Twenty years of creation, and the end is foreordained. It it any wonder I prefer to write?


* Sure, the future for many books will be to get lost amid the swamp of other work in the basements of Amazon and Smashwords collections (far beyond the front pages where anyone ever looks), but the book is still there, as complete and usable and enjoyable (or not) as the day when the last t was crossed and i was dotted.

[Steven Lake]

GMW, that's a very interesting take on the whole thing. And you're right, there is quite a creative process when it comes to programming as you start with an idea and have to flesh it out and figure out where you're as you go along until you reach the finish product.