Writing and Working Full-Time
Striking a Balance Between Art and Necessity
According to an article by Amy Rosenberg in Poets & Writers magazine, entitled "Writers at Work," the romantic idea of writers and other artists starving in garrets whilst pursuing their creative endeavours was popularized by French writer Henri Murger in the 1840s. Puccini also popularized this lifestyle in his opera La Bohème. And who could forget the wildly satirical book Hunger by Knut Hamsun about a writer who purposefully starves himself for the sake of his art, even though his art is more about his fantasy of being a writer than actually getting down to the work of writing.
Billy Collins, the former U.S. Poet Laureate, once chuckled and said, when asked how to live a more literary life, “There is no such thing.”
A Balancing Act
Miguelina Perez, of Silver Spring, Maryland, knows well the difficult balancing act between art and real life. She holds down a full-time job with a government agency and also attends university classes. However, she says that if creativity is calling, that one must find a way to heed that call, and it is possible to accomplish a number of things.
“I make sure that after work and after all of my errands are done, the dogs are walked and fed, that I set aside several hours for my jewelry, writing, and knitting,” Perez says. “When I worked on the problem, a solution came to me: ‘Why not set up a timer for each craft?’
“So now I give each craft equal time by setting up a timer for one hour. After the timer goes off, I stop at a comfortable place and then begin the next project.”
The Poets & Writers article is a series of interviews with people who, like Perez, balance full-time jobs with writing. There are a few points that everyone seems to agree on, as there are only 24 hours in one day, no matter what.
How to Balance Art and Real Life
- Set aside specific time to write, whether in the morning or evening, and probably one day every weekend.
- Writers must make honest assessments of themselves and their situations and figure out how and when they work best. Then set aside time in that period and actually use it to write.
- Writers should use people met and experiences had on the job to feed their art and protect themselves from becoming too insular.
- Writers should realize and accept that they may, and probably will, have to often give up things such as partying, clubbing, and other social events. This is how writers sacrifice for their creativity, rather than starving their bodies.
- Learn to and be OK with balancing multiple projects and tasks at once. If a writer works for two hours in the morning on a creative project before his or her job begins, then that writer must be able to shut the creative work down when it is time for the day job to begin.
- Never surrender the dream of writing.
It is also helpful to take note that a number of writers have had full-time jobs, so this is an honorable, traditional part of the writing life. Kurt Vonnegut, William Carlos Williams, T.S. Eliot, Henry Fielding, Anthony Trollope (he wrote 49 novels), and Henry Miller all held down full-time jobs and kept writing.
Poets & Writers magazine is a useful and encouraging source of information, with sections called “The Practical Writer” and “The Literary Life.” For more information online, visit Poets & Writers.
Balancing work and writing is not an easy art.
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