So Writer, What's Your Day Job?

Bob from The Incredibles tries a day job

Instead of talking about books today, I’m talking about writers!  Actually, about writers before they could pay the bills as writers. 

When people ask me what I do now, I respond that I am a writer.  If they probe about where they can buy my books, I have to add the word “unpublished” or “unpaid.”  (I do not say “aspiring” because I don’t aspire to write; I do write.)  But no shame in that, people!  Most full-time authors start out with other jobs that pay their mortgage and utilities until they can strike out on the book tours and interviews that accompany a best-seller and a writing career.  

Here are a few examples of the day jobs of famous authors (before they hit it big): 

Douglas Adams – Security Guard

Mary Higgins Clark – Radio Script Writer

Stephen King – High School English Teacher

Stephenie Meyer – Stay at Home Mom

Nicholas Sparks – Pharmaceutical Salesman

Kurt Vonnegut – Saab Dealership Manager 

But of course, you can find best-selling authors with just about any day job in their past.  Because in case you think you should simply declare yourself an author and quit your day job, you might want to rethink that. 

In addition, plenty of authors keep their day job even after publishing.  In the tough competitive world of book sales, it often makes sense to keep that anchor.  Moreover, you might find that your day job lends to your writing in helping you come up with ideas, dialogue, etc.  You might also simply enjoy both your day job and your writing (see Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid). 

Admittedly, for myself, I have my fabulous husband paying the bills.  Call me a kept woman, if you wish!  But I do have a “day job,” so to speak.  I am a stay-at-home mom, housekeeper (so wish I could hire this one out), and volunteer.  And yes, I include volunteer because it requires time and effort to work in the school library, write and prepare Bible class lessons, and co-direct a kids’ camp.  Between those tasks, writing, and (okay) long lunches with friends from time to time, I stay busy. 

So what is the perfect day job that facilitates writing?  Screenwriter John August suggests a few criteria in his post Good Day Jobs for Writers and Others.  Moreover, author Jennifer Jabley makes a great case for keeping the day job in her post for Writer Unboxed. 

If you are a fiction writer, what’s your day job?  How are keeping the roof over your head and food in your belly?  Do you hope to be able to quit that job someday?  Do you want to keep it?  Why?

Monday Musings: Happy without a Housekeeper

As I got crouched down and scrubbed the bottom of my toilet bowl, I thought about how a lot of people hate to clean stuff.  We like having things clean . . . but cleaning them ourselves is altogether different.

Since I don’t currently have (actually, have never had) a housekeeper, all the lovely chores are left to Yours Truly, with mixed results.  I’m terrible with clutter (see my post on Where Is My Stuff?), but great about cleaning underneath.  So how does cleaning relate to writing?  Here are few things I’ve thought of:

1.       Some chores you hate; others you don’t mind.  A friend of mine despises doing laundry, while I don’t particularly dislike it.  But if I could go the rest of my life without ever getting on my knees, leaning over the porcelain, and scrubbing the yellowish ring off the bathtub, I would do her laundry and mine.  If someone would dust thoroughly all the flat surfaces and window blinds, I would scoop their litter boxes and mine until our cats cross over to feline heaven.

The same with writing.  There are some parts of this process that are enjoyable (like, for instance, the writing), and others that are less palatable – perhaps editing, proofreading, queries, etc.  For both housekeeping and writing, you can delegate some things, but not all.

2.       You have to use some elbow grease.  Like it or not, the best way to have a clean floor is not a mop, a Swiffer, a Shark, or whatever.  If you want to know that you know that you know that your floor is clean, get down on your hands and knees and scrub it yourself.  When you clean sinks, toilets, or bathtubs, it isn’t sufficient to swish a little soap and water around in there (as I have explained several times to my boys); you have to put a little pressure into it.  Get the stains off and the shine on!

So it is with writing.  The only way to write a novel is one word at a time.  The only way to write one word at a time is to plant your derriere in a chair and start typing.  The only way to start typing is to think about what you want to say and then say it.  There are no shortcuts to a complete manuscript.  It takes work.  It is the most fun work I’ve ever done!  But it is work.  Put mental elbow grease into your writing.

3.       When you’re finished, stand back and enjoy the view.  My sister has told me that when she gets the house completely clean, she has been known to send the children outside to play for an hour.  It’s just one hour, mind you, but she walks around with a grin of satisfaction at her job well done.  That is, until she lets the little mess-makers back in and the process starts all over again.  But there should be a period of self-congratulation.

When your first draft or your final draft is done, there is an “Aaaah” moment.  You stare at the word or page count or the crisp pages in your hand and think, “I wrote that. I am a writer.”  You deserve a celebrity-studded party with a champagne-flowing fountain, live music, a dance floor with a disco ball, and you as the guest of honor because a completed manuscript is a big stinkin’ deal!  But whether anybody sings Jolly Good Fellow to you or not, take some pleasure in a job well done.  Your moment won’t last long because now you have to sell that book or start the next one that keeps poking the back side of your brain and wants to be written.

Okay, my moment of being happy that I could learn some lessons from being without a housekeeper is done.  As I reflect more, I think I’ll take the best-selling author career with the multi-book contract, the big house, the sports car, and the cleaning staff.  Hey, I’ve already learned these lessons anyway.  Maybe I could learn some new ones from unbridled success and fame!  I’m willing to give it a shot!

Wednesday Words: Sesquipedalianism

I love long, descriptive words that hint at their meaning.  Serendipity is surprisingly delightful every time it rolls off my tongue.  The word tentacles seems to reach and encircle me.  Rambunctious has a pop in the middle of the word that seems energetic and ornery at the same time.  Effervescent sounds hissing and bubbly.

But perhaps my favorite example is the word sesquipedalianism – which means the use of long words.  Isn’t that grand?!  I’ve known people who are sesquipedalians (given to the use of long words), including my husband at times.  There is something intriguing about a person who can insert the perfect, arcane four-syllable word whenever a situation calls for it.  Plenty of authors are in favor of peppering their writing with tongue-twisting words of great length.  I’ve read them; haven’t you?

I don’t know when I could possibly interject the word sesquipedalianism into a novel, but I await that golden opportunity.  Maybe I’ll create a character who uses long, esoteric words excessively and have another character quip about his rampant sesquipedalianism.   Perhaps I’ll babble on and on in a novel myself and refer to the narrator’s sesquipedalianism.  Someday, though, somehow, someone in my novels will display sesquipedalism.  (Perhaps I’m doing it already.)

In case you’re wondering about the word’s etymology, “sesqui” means one-and-a-half and “ped,” of course, means “foot.”   Thus, the use of words over a foot-and-a-half long!

 In reality, of course, most writing should be far more accessible.  The trick is to make what the narrator and characters say seem natural, effortless.  A well-placed, multisyllabic word can be appropriate.  But C.S. Lewis, replying to a letter from a child, advised, “Always prefer the plain direct word to the long vague one.  Don’t implement promises, but keep them.”  Soon after, he added, “Don’t use words too big for the subject.  Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.” (Letters to Children, p. 64.)

I agree.  In fact, it would be awful to talk about serendipity when something is only slightly surprising or nice.  Or to constantly refer to my children as rambunctious when they rarely run that wild.  In fact, I have yet to find a perfect spot for my word sesquipedalianism.  I have opted instead for relatively average words of average length.  I hope that makes my writing more readable.

Still, one of these days, the perfect circumstance will arise, and I will happily type sesquipedalianism on a stark white screen.  Okay, not simply on this blog, but in a book.  Won’t that be serendipitous?

What are some of your favorite one-and-a-half foot words?

Round of Words in 80 Days Update:  1,392 of 5,000 words written, 64 of 186 pages edited, and two sick kids back at school.  Okay, that last one wasn't a write goal, but now that they are well, I can write even more!

It Begins with a Hurricane

While 104 mile-per-hour winds rattled and ripped apart our roof and rain swirled and surged into our dining room, we slept soundlessly on the brass bed of a relative’s home.  Hurricane Ike was assaulting the shores of Southeast Texas, and we, like many Houston area residents, didn’t hang around to eyewitness the destruction or experience the weeks-long power outage afterward.  Having stuffed enough clothes and toiletries for a week as well as some precious mementos and important paperwork into our compact car, our family had evacuated to San Antonio.

With a suddenly open schedule and open laptop before me, I decided to start writing a novel.  I had written in the past – songs, poetry, newsletter articles, a novel chapter or two.  I was likely embarking upon another hopeful but fruitless attempt.  I began Chapter 1.  Then I wrote a plot line.  Next, I wrote Chapter 2.  Hey, this was actually going well!

Fast forward to a return trip to our home halfway between Houston and Galveston, the discovery of a huge hole in our roof, and the kids’ return to school.  In between the many insurance-related phone calls, I committed to write for at least an hour a day.  As I wrote, everything around me blurred into a fog and evaporated.  I soon realized that I could sit at my laptop for 3-5 hours at a time, delving into characters and weaving the plot for my mystery novel.

At some point, I emerged from my bedroom to announce that I had 50 pages, and my adolescent son said, “Way to go, Mom!”  Then I had 100 pages, then 150, and so on, until my 250(ish)-page first draft was complete.  It took months of writing and editing to get a final product, but eventually a manuscript was birthed.

Now I could say with confidence:  I am a writer.  An author.  A novelist.

It’s April 2011, and I am not a published novelist (but will be!).  Yet I have begun other projects – a juvenile fiction book and a couple of young adult novels.  After schlepping around the house with my laptop for months – from study desk to bed to living room couch to bedroom desk and back – I finally took a section of our guest bedroom and created my own writing nook.

Looking for inspiration from authors, I found Virginia Woolf’s famous quote:  “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”  How true!  Thanks to my hard-working husband, the finances are taken care of, and now I have that room of my own.

But of course, that’s only the beginning.  You also must have ideas, time, commitment, a working computer, perseverance, a willingness to edit with a machete at times and a scalpel at others, and the notion that someday, somehow, somewhere, someone will read what you have written . . . and like it.

A Round of Words in 80 Days Update: 5,354 words last week; two blog posts; starting my first middle-grade novel edit this week.

The Write Challenge

Tooling around on Twitter, I linked over to the Round of Words in 80 Days challenge through another writer.  Aha! I thought.  This is just what I need.  After spending the last few weeks toting my car from one shop to another for repairs that made me wonder if a car payment wouldn’t be preferable, learning that the pipes under my house were clogged with debris and required replacement, and checking off about a billion family-related errands that needed doing but did nothing to further my writing goals, I wondered if I should be shooting for the moon with this author thing anyway.

But I’m a Texan.  We like shooting down here.  So after a minor (10 minutes maybe, an hour, no more than a half-day) pity party, I decided I needed some goals and direction so I could get busy, catch up, and see some progress.  I wrote a few goals for the month of April. 

But I’m the only one who would know if I met these goals.   All too often, the cluttered kitchen table clamors for attention, a girlfriend calls to chat about nothing in particular, or the thought of a pedicure sounds much more relaxing than staring down a blank page with that “it’s you or me” confrontation.  And that doesn't count the sometimes constant interruptions of family members.  It’s easy to get distracted, discouraged, or downright deranged in this writing process.

A little encouragement and accountability, though, goes a long way.  Ask the dieter who has an exercise buddy, the football player who has his cheering fans, the employee who has a complimentary boss.  I immediately loved the idea of setting an 80-day goal and knowing that I was in a group challenge where we would be secretly and publicly giving attagirls and attaboys to the participants.

So here are my Round of Words in 80 Days goals:

1.       5,000 words per week on middle grade novel (working title: The First Time).  I thought this seemed ambitious until I counted the words I banged out in 70 minutes time, and it was 1515.  Hopefully, this is a realistic goal for me.  If I keep this pace, I will finish this WIP long before the 80 days are up.

2.       If first draft finished, edit through once.  If I do indeed finish my draft, I want to go through the novel and revise it once.  I typically edit several times over, but the first few trudge-throughs are the hardest.  It’s particularly difficult to yank out whole passages that you like but don’t add to the story.  Still, it’s necessary.

3.       Two blog entries per week.  Having started this new blog, it is my intention to post on Tuesdays and Fridays . . . faithfully.

That’s it.  I have plenty of other personal goals, like keeping my toenails painted, starting to work on a tan, and seeing if my old swimsuits fit.  (It’s almost 90 degrees here, and I’m itching for the beach.)  But I need to keep my writing goals in mind!  I’m looking forward to the 80 Days Challenge!

Julie Glover, Word Lover

I LOVE words!  I don’t necessarily mean that I enjoy talking.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.  But I love the sumptuousness of language.  I relish words, lyrics, accents, sarcasm, idioms, proverbs, and all things language – even punctuation and grammar.

Some people think this is weird.  When you list among your must-reads Strunk & White and Eats Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss, a few eyebrows are bound to furrow with puzzlement.

Where did this love come from?  I suppose some of it is inborn.  However, I credit my father as well with tapping into that sense of wonder at the richness of words.  He loved puns, poems, prose, debate, and dialogue.  He quoted Shakespeare’s “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more . . .” more times than I can count.  He told jokes like, “How you say ‘Turn off the light’ in French?  Darken de john!”  He invented a speech that he cited regularly: “Within the vicissitudes of time, one realizes the eschatological considerations . . .” that went on from there and made little sense but introduced words that I was finally curious enough to look up.  He also knew grammar in a way that most people didn’t; for instance, why one should say “It is he” rather than “It is him.”

My obsession deepened with books, books, and more books.  There are so many quotable lines in the classics, like Don Quixote and Sense and Sensibility.  But just as much, how wonderful is a Dr. Seuss book – any Dr. Seuss book!  And in between were all the terrific authors I’ve devoured who put their precious efforts into finding the right combination of words and phrases to communicate a deep truth, a feeling I relate to, or a humorous observation.

It’s rare to find others who enjoy these things as much as I – unless, of course, I’m hobnobbing with fellow writers!  Are we a strange breed?  Other writers (and, to be fair, English teachers) are the only people I’ve talked to who relate to spending five full minutes choosing the next word in a sentence or pondering for a while whether a comma or a dash would be more appropriate.

The beautiful truth about writing is that there are SO many words in the English language (over 600,000 in the Oxford English Dictionary) available to us, there are numerous punctuation choices to be made (with rules and flexibility), and language can communicate the unity of human experience.  It is this awe I have for language that makes me consider myself Julie Glover, Word Lover.

What do you love about words?  About the English language in particular?  How does your love of words enhance your writing?