How to Write a Book When You’ve Got a Full-Time Job
All you need is structure and a process.
When people tell me that the mark of a writer is someone who commits to a word count or page count every day, I laugh the laugh of crazed serial killers — the kind of back-of-the-throat guttural cackle that causes most people to slowly step away.
I’ve been writing since I was a child, and the idea of starting my day in front of a blank page is just as comforting as hallowing out my eyes with an acetylene torch. Over the past twenty years, I’ve had two of my books published by traditional houses while balancing demanding jobs and a full-time life. And guess what? I didn’t have time for the romanticized writer existence where one sips freshly brewed coffee while wearing their threadbare robe as depicted in bad movies and blog posts. Of course, all writers are the coffee-guzzling, unkempt superstitious sort.
In college, the editor of the literary review approached me with a copy of my short story in hand. He looked at the paper and then up at me in confusion, as if he couldn’t reconcile the woman wearing a flannel shirt and baseball cap with the woman who wrote a story about her mother being her first hurt. After he complimented the story, he said in a smaller voice that I didn’t look like a writer, to which I responded, “Well, what the fuck…
