Don't Quit Your Day Job

Others may have said it to you before, but rarely, I assure you, with such steadfast and sincere admiration. Perhaps you’ve heard it after a night of karaoke, or when tinkering unknowingly with a friend's drum kit. Or maybe after you’ve tried your hand at woodwork or basket weaving. But please believe me that I mean this in the nicest way. I beg you: don’t quit your day job.

We often find ourselves complaining about the time wasted between the hours of 9am and 5pm (or 6pm, or 7pm…), wondering how much writing we could have accomplished if we could only be full-time writers. But there’s something to be learned there (and not just the value of hard labor, work ethics, blah blah blah); the day job has provided both inspiration and content for the written word for centuries. Some of the earliest English-language poems were found scribbled in the margins of Bibles, composed by an unnamed monk who, apparently bored of the toil of transcribing, found sudden inspiration in the song of a bird.

Fast-forward to the 20th Century: Kurt Vonnegut worked in the communications department of General Electric before turning his full attention to writing – and his corporate experience is beautifully satirized in the pages of his postmodern classic, Player Piano. Wallace Stevens held the vice presidency of an insurance company for two decades, outlasted in the corporate world only by our current U.S. Poet Laureate, Ted Kooser, who spent 35 years as the VP of Lincoln Benefit Life in Nebraska. Charles Bukowski wrote one of his most inspired pieces of fiction, Post Office, about his days as a letter carrier in Los Angeles.

Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins often writes of the poets at their windows, staring off at the world, pondering what to write next. With all due respect to Mr. Collins, when I think of writers, I think not of them staring idly and awaiting inspiration, but shuffling diligently about their day, taking notes with their eyes or jotting words and thoughts in tiny Moleskine notebooks buried in their back pockets. I think of a writer coming to minor epiphanies on the subway or sending an e-mail to herself with an idea for a short story she will write after the long workday has ended.

Being a writer doesn't mean having to do it for a living. It simply means one must do his/her best to practice the craft when there is time. It often means telling your friends you'll catch up with them after you "crank out a few more pages," or asking the sitter stay an extra hour to watch the kids while you lock yourself away in your spare bedroom cum office. When someone asks what we do, rarely do we tell them we are novelists, short story writers, poets, essayists. Even at The Void – which is comprised of full-time lawyers, publicists, communication managers, mortgage brokers – it takes a few hours of conversation and a few rounds of two-for-one happy hour pints to get us to admit the deeply buried truth: we are writers, too.

Stevens once said, "It gives a man character as a poet to have this daily contact with a job." This, we believe, is true not just for poets (and clearly not just for men), but for everyone aspiring to write creatively. The value of having a "normal" occupation, one that throws you into the whirlpool of contemporary human experience, is an
irreplaceable one.

So until the Library of Congress bestows upon you the honor of being the U.S. Poet Laureate, keep jotting down stories on corporately monogrammed stationery; continue crafting poems on multi-colored post-it notes. Until you have absorbed all you can from the rat race – until you've scribbled in the margins of every otherwise valueless PowerPoint presentation – we implore you write whenever and wherever you can, and don't quit your day job.

At least not yet.

Chris is the Editor in Chief of VoidMagazine.com. He is the author of the novel [TBD], published by [TBD] in [month, year]. He lives in East Harlem, NY.