The Writer's Life in the 21st Century

One of my resolutions for this year has been to devote more time to my creative writing, which I had sorely neglected in 2012. By "work", I don't mean the first draft, which I practically breathe on the page, but revealing it to new pairs of eyes for the first time, rewriting and revising, and sending it out to strangers in strange offices for them to judge my work on its publishability. And as I am finding out, this is where the real work in creative writing endeavors lies.

So far this has proved to be a challenge, as I work a full-time job that requires me to sit in front of a computer 35 hours a week. But it's not just these hours I can factor in--there is also commuting time, wake-up time, and decompression when I get home after devoting my entire day to someone else. So the last thing I want to do when I get home is to spend another 3-5 hours on another computer. And do more work--albeit of a slightly different nature.

In order to become a published writer, one has to not only write, but rewrite, edit, and gather enough gumption to send out her work to the best magazines and publishers (and know which ones to send to). This can take several hours out of one's day, and if one has a day job or a life of some kind, this would have to be spread out over several days. And one would also need to have the energy and ability to concentrate on such things for such a large block of time. This doesn't turn out to be so easy. Some days I am just burned out and don't want to deal with anything that is also work.

These elements, of course, apply to all writers who have had to struggle to make their voices heard. What makes this time, this century, unique? The unlikelihood that we will ever be able to make a decent living off our writing alone, for one--the number of writers who could was always small, but it seems to be smaller. This makes the grinding 9-to-5 even more essential to the living of a writer's life.

We also have a lot of distractions to push away in order to devote the level of concentration required to follow through with the remaining steps of the writing and publishing process. Fewer people will also likely read our writing--especially if one decides to write literary fiction, thanks in part to the aforementioned distractions. (As for myself, though I do enjoy literary fiction, have found myself increasingly bored with literary realism, so those of you who specialize in that genre--good luck with that) With the amount of time required in order to even get oneself out there, it's amazing that people manage to do it at all.

Obviously, it's not impossible. But what if you feel like you were more on top of things before? When your schedule was more varied? Before you had broadband internet access, and just had your imagination to keep you company on those long summer days? What about those days when all you want to do is write, but you have to work all day that day?



These days, anyone can be a writer, and it's all the more challenging to be a successful one. Self-publishing sounds great, but it won't get you far if you don't put in the work to edit, design, and market the thing yourself. This in and of itself is a full-time job. In the face of a 9-to-5, year-round day job commitment solely to fund my ability to feed myself and pay off debt (okay, and save up for fun things) while I wile away my few recreational hours attempting to gather the mental strength to focus on what had always been what I'd always wanted. My name out there, my voice telling the stories I'd always wanted to hear. Now I see why the life of a creative writing professor is so appealing. But that, right now, is out of the question.

This situation, while doable, is not my ideal. I'd prefer not to work more than 30 hours in a week--and even that's pushing it. A sabbatical every year. What I want out of a job is incompatible with the capitalist economy, because I want to engage in doing something that for most people over all of time has never made them much money: making their (non-financial) dreams a reality.

Until the day I get what I want out of work and of life, I will have to force myself to become more disciplined in balancing out my schedule and making the most of my time. Because if I don't, I won't make it. The road to achieving one's goals, no matter how small, is always a difficult one, especially when it comes to fighting the curse of complacency that often befalls the swathes of full-time office drones. I can't let that kind of work define me. I must always remember the spirit of my younger self, with free-flowing days and a wild imagination forever undimmed. This is true of everyone feeling stuck in the grind, of course, and fighting to break free is half the battle.

Turning off the internet once in a while may help, too.