Q:
Hiya team,
I have a very queer problem in that I’m afraid having a day job makes me a creative sellout. My college major was creative writing, but my actual creative writing classes were not so useful for a couple of reasons. 1) I was seriously mentally ill and not getting proper treatment through most of college (though thankfully I’m on the right meds and in consistent therapy now) and 2) My professors were pretty snobby about the genres I wanted to write. I learned how to create a Very Serious Short Story in realistic adult fiction (read: work out my personal problems with self-inserts and quippy prose), but not how to write a compelling romance or build an interesting, believable fantasy world. Nothing I made in college felt like me, and when all my mental illness stuff crescendoed after graduation, I lost all interest in writing or anything else.
Now I’m 27. It feels implausible. I work for a tech company and I have a Master’s degree in library and info science. More and more of my life feels permanent instead of temporary and it’s freaking me all the way out.
I’ve been journaling since I was 10, and that’s basically the only writing I’ve been doing for several years. The part of my brain that made up stories when I was a kid feels inaccessible. I want to get back to it, but I’m not sure how. Are there books you’d recommend? How do I stop thinking all my ideas are stupid? How do I even start having ideas again? How do I keep my job from defining me?
Love,
Every Writer Cliche In A Trenchcoat
A:
I can relate to your experience so, so much. I majored in music in college and have dreamed of being a professional musician for most of my life. Pretty much the entirety of my experience with studying music was defined by a racism that told me I was never, ever going to be good enough, no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I practiced, no matter how much I destroyed my body pursuing it. And yet, it was always my fault for never working hard enough or smart enough in my practice. And yet, the fact of my failures was proof that I just didn’t have the talent for it. When I was in college, I limited my incredibly diverse interests in music to the Western classical cannon in an attempt to just try to have a place in a world that truly had no place for me. I graduated and got a full-time job doing data analysis in a consulting firm with the plan that this would be a short-term stop so I could save up some money, practice and become a stronger player, and then go get my Masters in Music. None of it panned out. It’s been ten years since I graduated, and I still work full-time doing data analysis, I’m the farthest thing from a musician, and only in the last couple of years have I started writing a little bit, mostly as an emotional outlet that coincided with coming into my queerness.
So I’m going to start at the very beginning of your letter. As a fellow “creative sellout,” I’m asking you to please, please, please stop thinking of yourself (and by proxy, anyone else) in these terms, just because you have a day job and aren’t pursuing your passion for writing as your full-time gig. You’re not alone in viewing the world in that way, and it is such a toxic, toxic culture of “do what you love” (or otherwise, you’re just a sellout) that is entirely about the exploitation of labor. It has never been lost on me that a place like Autostraddle exists on the underpaid labor of several people, compared to the kind of money people make in, say, consulting or investment banking. This is true of every single independent, community-based arts organization I know of and many of the well-established, well-endowed national ones, as well. This is not how it should be. People should not have to sacrifice their lives in order to pursue their passions and do things in service of the communities they love. And this is, by no means, a criticism of Autostraddle because I’m incredibly aware of the fact that Autostraddle pays far, far more than most independent magazines. (And, it actually pays at all! I have seen postings for editorial jobs that are completely volunteer.) But this is exactly what I mean when I say that the exploitation of labor is built into the “do what you love” framework.
The notion of “creative sellout” also denies the reality that there is a substantial privilege involved in “doing what you love” as your full-time gig. To be able to “do what you love” depends on having the financial means to do that, which so many people simply don’t have access to. It also requires a degree of financial security that is about so much more than just how much money you have. So much of the last ten years of my life has involved completely changing my relationship to money because I was raised with an extreme scarcity mindset and in an environment where I was repeatedly told that any money spent on myself was money wasted. It was never, ever going to be possible for me to take the substantial financial risks and debt required to be a full-time musician who didn’t have a safety net to fall back on, even for emotional support, so long as I had that mindset, no matter how much money I made.
Also, let’s not forget about the fact that so many, so so many of the creatives we love and admire had day jobs and were not professional or full-time writers, musicians or artists. This is literally the story of Octavia Butler. Sure, she did become successful at some point and transitioned to being a full-time writer. But can you imagine how many Octavia Butlers there are in the world, quietly writing beautiful and powerful pieces while holding down full-time jobs just so they can write on the side? We may not know their names, but they’re there. And when we do have the rare joy of stumbling on their work we think of them as a “one-off” writer, we struggle to remember them, they don’t get awards and accolades, they don’t lead writer’s retreats. But they exist and their work exists and it has real value.
The notion of “creative sellout” also denies the reality that there is a substantial privilege involved in “doing what you love” as your full-time gig.
In terms of your actual questions, there’s a few things I can suggest to you based on my own experience of working full time and trying to pursue creative endeavours as well. I have struggled a lot with my full-time jobs taking over my life and defining me. Part of what made it possible for me to start doing some of the creative things I love outside of work was to move into a new job that was a step down in terms of responsibilities and fairly easy.
One of the hardest things for me about being creative while holding a full-time job is having the mental energy at the end of a full work day to go and do more activities that require mental and emotional energy and critical thinking. So reducing the intellectual and emotional toll of my full-time job has made it a little easier for me to reserve those resources for the things I actually love doing. I will admit, this was a hard pill for me to swallow, to stop actively pursuing advancement in my full-time profession, and maybe you can relate to that or maybe not. But if you want to make time for things you love outside of your job in tech, then I think you have to deprioritize professional development in your job in tech so that you do actually have time for those other things.
(Although, I’m also a brown woman who does data work for a living so, you know, for me any professional development has always required going way above and beyond and then putting up a serious fight to get a fraction of what I deserve for my work. At some point I had to ask myself whether and to what extent any of that was worth my emotional time and energy, especially since, most of the time, I haven’t even succeeded in getting what I was asking for, let alone what I am due. Your experience with that might be different, I don’t know, but I imagine that, at a minimum, as a queer person in tech you are probably running up against some similar things.)
Another thing I’ve worked on a lot in my current position is being extremely vigilant about creating strong boundaries around work. I really could only do this by starting fresh at a new job because that allowed me to redefine myself as an employee and my relationship to work within the organization I’m in. I do not work outside my work hours. I don’t care what is “on fire,” I will not respond to an email outside of work hours or on the weekend. I do not download my work email or any work chat apps (Slack, Teams, etc.) onto my personal phone. (This is both for boundaries but also privacy. Depending on where you work and the agreement with your employer, if you have a work email or a work chat on your personal phone then your entire phone could be subject to being viewed during an investigation and/or wiped when you leave by your employer.) Before the pandemic, I was extremely wary of giving my coworkers or my boss my personal phone number, and, now that I’ve had to, I don’t read or respond to texts or phone calls from coworkers or my boss outside of my working hours. I occasionally take days or even a week off of work to work on a writing project, and I adamantly refuse to check my work email or respond to messages even though “I’m just at home.” These boundaries are really important in terms of reserving both the emotional and mental resources to do the things I love and actually having the time to do those things, as well.
Both of the above points will go a long way towards keeping your job from defining you, but another thing that I’ve had to actively work on is… not defining myself by my work. It’s so easy, when you meet someone new, to make casual conversation around what you do for work so we are constantly in situations where work is how we are introducing ourselves and, therefore, defining ourselves. For a lot of reasons, I previously would only answer these questions with whatever my full time job was. In the last couple of years, I started being more intentional about how I approached this question about work, and so now when I answer the question, I make it clear in my response that my full time job is really my side gig that pays the bills and I’m more interested in doing other things that will never pay my bills. I also am way more intentional about not making employment a default conversation topic just because it’s an easy one. This shift in how I approach small talk has made it easier for me (and others) to spend time talking about ourselves in terms of the things we care about, which, for some people, is their work but for many it really isn’t. (Someone also once pointed out to me how there’s a classism to making “what do you do for work?” a go-to icebreaker, which I thought was a great point, but that’s a conversation for another day.)
I will admit, this was a hard pill for me to swallow, to stop actively pursuing advancement in my full-time profession, and maybe you can relate to that or maybe not. But if you want to make time for things you love outside of your job in tech, then I think you have to deprioritize professional development in your job in tech so that you do actually have time for those other things.
Getting to your questions around how to re-engage with writing, first, it sounds like your professors in college might still be in your head, based on what you say about about “thinking all my ideas are stupid.” I don’t say that to be critical — this is also something I have really struggled with in my relationship to music and something I continue to work on. Honestly, what’s made the biggest difference in my life is connecting with a teacher who affirms me and the things I love and want to do and the skills I want to develop in the ways my previous teachers and professors in college never did.
So, in your case, this might mean researching and taking a creative writing workshop class in romance or fantasy writing. One of the (very few) silver linings of the pandemic has been that so many things have moved to a virtual format so you have access to a lot of content and resources that you might not otherwise. Look up what writing workshops are available and read reviews from people who have taken those workshops in the past to see what people have had to say. Also ask people in your network if they have recommendations for fiction writing workshops. Someone I know found a poetry workshop she really liked through Instagram. A nonfiction writer friend of mine really recommended the workshops offered by Catapult; she is taking a class with them right now and absolutely loves it. All of this stuff is expensive and may be more money than you want to spend, but the way I’ve taught myself to look at this is to say, “I have this job that I really don’t like because it gives me the financial means to pursue the things I actually love. So I need to put my money where my mouth is and actually, really invest in myself.”
Another thing that has helped me is to create real accountability for myself. It is so impossible for me to consistently engage with my musical pursuits or with writing when I don’t have something concrete and tangible to work towards. This is where working with a teacher has been incredibly helpful because every week I had to show up on Skype and so I personally felt compelled to practice more because I wanted to work on new things in each lesson and not recap the same thing week after week. My friend taking the workshop with Catapult has similarly found it not only a great experience in terms of improving her writing but also incredibly valuable in nudging her to actually see through a project that has been more than two years in the making. Part of the reason I applied to write for Autostraddle two years ago is because I knew that I would never sit down and write if I didn’t have some reason to do it. So, in addition to the writing workshops, another thing for you to consider is to look at different types of publishing opportunities and then commit to writing towards submitting something to at least one of them.
Honestly, what’s made the biggest difference in my life is connecting with a teacher who affirms me and the things I love and want to do and the skills I want to develop in the ways my previous teachers and professors in college never did.
Finally, let’s talk about the age aspect of this. You are 27. I am 32 and also only just reconnecting with the things I love. Arundhati Roy was 35 when The God of Small Things was published and then she took a twenty year break before writing fiction again. Ann Leckie published Ancillary Justice when she was 47. These are just two books I love; I’m sure you can find similar examples among your favorite writers and novels, as well.
Another toxic aspect of our society and culture is how much emphasis we put on age, as if only the people who do something that society deems “remarkable” when they are impossibly young are the ones who bring value to the world. This also takes a serious toll on people’s mental health, as we have seen play out with Osaka Naomi at the French Open and, most recently, Simone Biles at the Olympics. If we’ve learned anything from these two incredible women, it’s that it’s ok to take a break from something when you need to.
So much of the last ten years of my life has also been about rebuilding my relationship with music because, while I have loved it for nearly twenty-five years at this point, it was also something that so many people wielded as a way to diminish my own value and self-worth. Based on the little bit that you described of your experience with creative writing, it sounds like this may have been some work you have needed to do as well. I don’t know where you are in your journey with that (I know for me, undoing that will probably be the journey of my life), but I’d encourage you to reconsider how you think about age and what is temporary and what is permanent, because taking time off from something to take care of yourself is always, always the right move.
And, my all-time favorite Serena Williams is a testament to the fact that you can always return to something no matter how old you are, no matter how many people say that your time is done, no matter whether you “win” or “lose” by whatever metric society is using. It is not too late. It will never be too late.
You can chime in with your advice in the comments and submit your own questions any time.
