The Lifestyle

There are a lot of reasons why I want to be a professional writer. The most important reasons include my love of reading and storytelling, the need I feel sometimes to get ideas on paper, the sheer audacity of creating something that didn't exist before. These are the things that drive me forward into this career. But there are other aspects of a writing life that I enjoy, the icing on the cake.

One of these is the writing lifestyle. If you ask ten different authors how they write, you're likely to get eleven different answers. Some adhere to a strict 9 to 5 schedule; some write only in the mornings, in the afternoons, at night, weekdays only, every day. The point is, this is a career that does not require a set schedule. In some ways, it doesn't even require a set amount of progress, although there are Deadlines. The work is entirely up to the individual, and the results are what matters.

There was a time in my life that I had all the free time I could have wished for. But I accomplished very little writing. I think the reason is because at that time, I had never really worked a standard 9 to 5 job. I didn't have the discipline that comes from needing to meet deadlines, from being responsible for a certain amount of work, and not getting time off just whenever I felt like it.

Now, I'm balancing my writing with a day job--one that I very much like, and one that I devote a lot of time and energy to. Yet I'm getting more writing done than ever. I get up at 4:30 every morning and get to Panera at 6am for ninety minutes of writing, every weekday. That's not a lot of time every day, but it's more than I was doing when I had no responsibilities.

I always regret having to leave the restaurant and return to normal life. I can't help but wonder what it would be like to be responsible only to myself and my writing on a daily basis. I picture myself in Manhattan, maybe, showing up at the door of an East Village coffeeshop the minute it opens and writing until noon. Then I take a walk, do some reading or some revising, get caught up on the clerical side of writing by doing submissions, blogging, and (dare I dream?) maybe answering fan mail. The evenings would be my own.

But I see myself spending a little time in the evenings too, and I see the writing encroaching into my weekends. Or maybe I'll have a hard time filling the days. What I've done over this past year is to build up the pressure to write, and then stuff it into a 90 minute container. The question is, what will happen if it's let out of that container? Will it expand to fill all available space? Or will the pressure die off?

Either way, that time is far in the future, and by then, I'll have probably built up even more pressure. Years ago, I had a little taste of what the lifestyle could be like, but I didn't have the discipline to make use of it. Now, if I want it back, I'm going to have to earn it.