Today's #BreakfastThread is in honor of my 10 year anniversary at this day job (which is officially the longest job I've held).

Morning #WritingCommunity, grab your oatmeal and let's talk about day jobs and writing.

As always, this is about my specific circumstances - generally physically & mentally healthy, no children, job is office work in the manufacturing sector, my schedule is 4-10s M-Th with occasional overtime.

But Katy, you've written eight books, and just signed a contract for two more. Why are you still working a day job?

Well...

To start, publishing is fickle and pay is not only not great once you break it down into per hour figures, but it's not consistent. I know myself well enough to know that a lack of consistent income would stress me out and stress/suffering does not make me a good creative.

Also healthcare is still a thing, though I'm jazzed SWFA now offers insurance and that's something that will help so many people and also makes any plans of leaving my day job far more feasible.

Know what else would? Universal healthcare and basic income. Call your reps.

My agent told me "don't quit your day job" and even though I'd had no plans to do so it's some of the best advice for writers.
Thanks to a perfect storm of events, when I sold my books to Orbit, my partner also quit a very toxic job and ended up being out of work for five years.

Things were VERY DIFFICULT for the last few years, not just financially, but without my day job and the book money we wouldn't have made it.

The point of this is, you just don't know what's going to happen and if you have a good job - stay there.

If you don't have a good job, maybe use the slight breathing room an advance might give you to start looking.

And then, you start figuring out how to do the things you need to do while still working.

The good part of this is you already KNOW you can write a book while working a day job, because that's how you got a publishing deal in the first place (maybe).

When talking about deadlines:

BE REALISTIC ABOUT HOW LONG THINGS TAKE.

AND THEY ALWAYS TAKE LONGER THAN YOU THINK. *laughs*

Remember if you're writing another book, you'll also being doing edits, & copyedits, & pass pages. And promo - interviews, podcasts, etc.

If you haven't done any of the following, figure out some methods that work for you: how to budget your time, how to get your ass off the internet and work, how to enforce writing time with family/friends, and most importantly...

How to ask for more time if you need it.

I wrote in the mornings and again after work. I talked to my day job boss about taking time off (a privilege because of where I work) and used my vacation to hit deadlines.

I worked a lot and honestly I'm not a great role model for this. *gestures in burnout*

If I could tell my younger self anything though, it would be to ask for more time up front. That one book a year is only barely doable under Good Circumstances™, which I was not necessarily in. That ideally 18 months is better.

Because it is possible to hold a day job & write, the larger percentage of us writers do just that. We can't afford to do otherwise.

Writers who do only write are often supported by other means, or have long established careers that are still sort of outliers in terms of pay.

My goal is to quit my day job, but to do it in a manner that's going to improve my creativity and not damage it. Working on living debt free, my decision to be a minimalist, the Patreon model are all part of that personal choice for me.

So, to wrap - Don't Quit Your Day Job when you sell a book (or 8). Figure out how to work around it, it does mean more work, but it's doable and in a manner that won't completely exhaust you if you remember to be realistic about how much time you have & budget for extra. Always.

If you liked this thread, feel free to follow and check out my books http://kbwagers.com  if you are looking for some political space opera and hopeful future military scifi.

And keep writing, the world needs your stories.