The Perks of Being a Writer

Counting all the yesses in a career filled with noes.

The writing life is not an easy one in many respects. It is filled with rejection. It is generally not filled with money. It is rarely a full-time gig—even during those periods of my life when I didn’t have a day job, I freelanced doing a lot of other things besides writing to support myself.

But the writing life has its perks, and I’m looking forward to a time when I can support myself entirely by writing and writing-related things. I have a day job now, and I also coach writing. I’m looking forward to doing more of the latter and less of the former in a couple of years. In the meantime, some Saturdays, I enjoy pretending I don’t have a day job and spending the day as if I’m a full-time successful author.

By far, the best thing about being a writer is the ability to spend my time doing work I enjoy doing. Writing brings in much less in the way of material wealth than a career that is perhaps more socially acceptable—they say not to do it for the money. Of course, we’d all like to be compensated for our work. But in lieu of a living wage, it’s nice to be able to do something I like to do. Imagine having both.

When I’m writing full-time, my days are my own. I can choose what I will write about or whether I will write at all. If it is a particularly beautiful day, I can decide to take a break and go for a walk on the beach. If there is a new movie coming out that I really want to see, I can go to a matinee—I feel a little bad admitting it, but part of the pleasure of a weekday matinee is thinking about the other poor slouches who are chained to their desks while I’m eating popcorn and Junior Mints. I temper my guilt by remembering that, most of the time, I’m one of those poor slouches myself.

I can rationalize spending my days doing just about anything—any life experience I have outside the four walls of my home has the potential to become fodder for future writing. I’m also convinced that not writing is an essential part of writing, so there’s that.

I never took up writing because it offered me a lot of free time to do other things, and the truth is, most days, I spend more hours writing in the early morning and/or late into the night than I ever spent working at any other job. Today more than ever, writers are entrepreneurs too, so I have to do my work. But just knowing I have flexibility gives me pleasure and a sense of well-being.

It seems that living a truly creative writing life and having one’s priorities in order are somehow intertwined. When I immerse myself in a writing life, I am more at peace. I know what I want from my life, and my wants are relatively simple. Being able to meet a friend for coffee or spend time with my family at a moment’s notice is one of the perks of the writing life that makes me feel most grateful.

Writing … it’s not just a job, it’s a lifestyle.