I have to agree that it's better working in a non-creative job so your juices are not depleted when it comes to your own writing, but the problem is it can be pretty miserable doing so and it's easy to get trapped in a job you probably shouldn't be doing. That can be counter productive. But you gotta pay the bills somehow and there just aren't enough writing/editing jobs to go around.

$11K a year? It doesn't surprise me. If you consider the average person works a 40-50K p.a. job for 20 years, that's a million bucks earned by the time they're 40. Most writers are owed a lot of back pay...

I worked with someone in the UK who was a receptionist and wrote a novel while at work. He just sat there with his headphone on and we all thought he was this super-efficient worker, and a year later he left with a publishing contract in his hands. It's possible to find a job where you're paid to sit somewhere and occasionally answer a phone, and put your mind to the task of writing.

I write full time now, but when I started out the BEST job I ever had was working in a warehouse with a bunch of illiterate dropkicks. A top time with great, if dumb conversation, and a built in encouragement to get back to my keyboard and earn to some proper foldable.

This is a question I've been most interested in and of course, it's hard to find a definitive answer.

Thank you for posting this. I really enjoyed it.

I work full-time in an office and it is soul-destroying at the moment, sucking motivation from my writing and I wish I didn't have to do it, that I could just write full-time. But I'm also aware that it is this that also inspires my writing as I love to explore the horror of working life.

It looks as if the stereotype of the struggling writer isn't likely to change any time soon.

I love writing of any type so I hope that by writing articles and web copywriting too I'll be able to earn enough money to still dabble in a bit of creative writing as well. I do realise that committing yourself to a writing career is more or less committing yourself to a lifetime of poverty though...

I think a job that's very separate to the world of writing is best. Certainly I've found editing and writing pretty incompatible - but I've never figured out another way to make money. And at 45 years and counting, I don't see that changing any time soon. sigh

Medicine can be a good fit. I spent hours listening to people tell their own stories, in their own language, which gives you real insights into how people who aren't like you think. And, back when I did it, there was no screen in the consulting room to stare at. It meant I got home to the keyboard really ready for some screen time, and ready to use my brain in a different way. I was a lot like Justine Larbalestier's builder in that respect. I hadn't used my creative stuff up during the day.

That doesn't mean I think you should do medicine, Sophie. My post sits like a nice piece of gratuitous advice, but I think I just dawdled over it and you happened to click send before I did. Or do medicine, if you want to. It only takes four years now in most places, even though there's more of it than back in the olden days.

I hadn't seen your comment when I made mine. Yours is not gratuitous advice -whenever I teach people who want to get into publishing because they want to be writers, I tell them to run away from the industry. I wish I had. Not because I haven't loved my jobs, I have, but because I think they have taken me away from my writing (and, of course, I have let them, because they are interesting. Catch 22).

. . .by which I do not mean that other jobs aren't interesting, more that I fell the same part of my brain is used for both. I was on a panel on saturday in which Carolyn Fraser (she typesets, among other things) talked about the importance of craft, and working practically, to offset work that all takes place intellectually. I agree - I think it's healthier to engage skills that don't just involve sitting at a computer. Also a big fan of Phillip Roth's advice that writers should all walk, and swim, to stay fit enough to write.

These are great responses - thanks everyone!

I’ve always found that with writing I need a lot of time to clear my head and vegetate – so working say as a waitress or a sales assistant often helped that. But then again, I found the actual jobs boring as hell.

I also think that it’s important for writers to get some experience in editing because it can really teach you so much about the flipside of the industry and make you really strict when it comes to assessing your own work. But, as sophie says, it’s extremely difficult to both edit and write intensely at the same time. So far, I’ve found I like jobs that are loosely industry-related but still leave time/headspace for writing. I also wonder if working part-time in a bookshop or library might work…

Thank you for exploring this issue. My "day job" is working as a critical care nurse in a major teaching/research facility in the South (US). In some ways it seems perfect, because being full-time means 'only' working three days a week. However, those three days are fourteen hours long, often without a break, and mentally, physically and emotionally exhausting. There is no way to write after a work day -- on work days I am only able to work and sleep. At least one of my days off each week is spent recovering from the exhausting work week. The other days, at least in theory, offer nice chunks of time to write. Furthermore, my work provides an endless source of material. My day job is not prestigious and I don't make much money but I must say that it is absolutely fascinating. And I feel like I'm making a contribution, however small, to my community.

When I used to work in a bookshop, I was fairly productive as a writer. A few different reasons, I think. Partly the hours helped. I didn't start until eleven, which meant there was a solid block of time in the morning in which to write. But it's also nice to have a job that's vaguely connected to writing but is not so all consuming that you haven't got any mental energy for your own work. Editing a literary magazine: not so much.

I identify completely with Justine Larbalestier's quote. My time as a research student is coming to a close and writing the dreaded Thesis is starting to occupy a lot of my time. Trying to switch from a dry, passive voice to something that people might actually want to read is sometimes impossible.

I recently conducted a poll on a journal of mine asking people if they have managed to balance their work life with their writing, and if so, how so? I got a lot of responses, and the gist seemed to be that there needed to be a tangible separation between the two in order for it to work. People that wrote for a living needed to take time off work to write, requiring time and space to get a clear head space from the words they dealt with every day. Whereas people that worked jobs with no relation to writing had that separation built in to their daily routine, and could therefore sit down every evening with no problem. Anyway, loved reading all the comments, and thanks for the post!

I find that staring at a computer screen all day makes me extremely resistant to doing the same when I get home. Unfortunately the only jobs I am qualified to do that don’t involve a computer screen pay me half as much, meaning I have to work more and write less. Still, I find the office environment itself oddly creatively stimulating. I keep a notebook beside me at my desk because I’ve always got ideas popping into my head in reaction to the things going on around me. Corporations and many of the people working for them are really pretty funny a lot of the time.

This is a great topic. I stopped doing any of my own writing when I started working in publishing, aged 20, though I'd been filling notebooks since I was four years old up to then. So many reasons - the fact that I was pouring my energy and intellect (such as it is) into work that I loved, that fully engaged me; the fact that it's hard to switch between critical, analytical writing and creative writing within the time frame available to you; that it's hard to turn off the inner critic sufficiently to write anything; the turn-off of all the people who think their writing is good when it's not (could that be me?) coupled with the turn-off of all those people whose writing is so much better than yours could ever be (who am I kidding?).

I started, tentatively (very randomly and unproductively) doing my own writing again about 10 years later, because I drifted into it for fun, and simply for myself, so my brain was tricked into it. But the writing creatively/writing professionally combination is still an issue.

A lot of writers seem to juggle working in a bookshop part-time with writing, which seems like a good combination to me. (Though when I did work in a bookshop part-time when my son was young, I didn't write.) I've had some tell me that they choose it over professional writing so that their brain is energised for their own writing when they sit down to their computer.

Loved all that. Education is another field to belong to which can inspire one to write. The biggest problem is that unless you're tough enough you can be swamped by its politics, its relentless need to defend oneself from parents, politicians, petty jealousies - and those are the good things. After that comes abuse of children, parents divorcing - no kidding, there's a wealth of material out there.

Oh, am I hearing this :) Up until February last year, I was a journalist, and was getting frustrated that I wasn't getting any of MY writing done. So I quit journalism, steered clear of any sort of writing related job and instead went to work part-time at the local supermarket so I could focus on my fiction. The result - I've sold my fantasy trilogy to HarperCollins and the first book's out next year.

Of course, now I wish I wasn't doing any other work at all, and that I could just do my writing but as you said, a few thousand a year ain't a sustainable income. It will be interesting, should I find myself in the rare situation of being to choose, whether I will give up working or not - I think it is a good thing to keep in touch with the world.

Working as a freelance structural editor and reader was an excellent apprenticeship in writing as I noodled away on my first novel, but when I began writing seriously I found I had to choose between writer and editor. More recently I've been teaching creative writing and I don't find that a very good fit either. At the same time I am also a mother (splitting household duties pretty evenly with my student husband), so any sort of paid work is really kind of a holiday from my life (with bonus superannuation!), and life is the constant struggle between writing and parenting.

Last semester, as I taught, I wrote a novel with a friend, this was great - fun, stimulating, and half the work, in fact it was the easiest writing I've ever done. I think you do modify your writing depending on your work commitments. My husband wrote a novel in lots of very short chapters (think Dando's Snail - you published that didn't you Sophie?) when he was working at IBM because he could squish in bits of writing time into his day job. De Certeau even has a word for that: la perruque.

Writing-related but also mind-numbing work is good. The best I had was writing the listings at the back of a DVD mag. It taught me to be concise, yet also numbed my brain enough to access that other level… And when an idea struck I was at the keyboard. And it paid in pounds! Magic.

Has anyone found high-school English teaching to fit well with writing?

My day job is creative, and what's more it's in the same field as my writing - Young Adult fiction. I manage a teen reading website three days a week at the State Library. I find it to be a really good fit. In the past I've had brainless data-entry or retail jobs, and I found they were totally brain-draining. Because I spent all day being stupid, I didn't feel like I was getting any kind of mental exercise and just turned into a bit of a 24/7 zombie.

With my current job, not only is it brain-stimulating, it's also been awesome for meeting people in the industry. I've made so many contacts working at CYL that I never ever would have met otherwise - and I'm always up to date with the latest trends, development (and gossip!) in YA.

...having said that, the idea of writing full time sounds utterly glorious.

In response to Nick Earls' comment about doing medicine, I ironically started a medical degree with the intention of becoming a writer afterwards. Alas, I found myself with no time to write and an itch to do anything but be a medical student.

I have now moved onto a different path, but I still intend to be a writer. And, in all honesty, I am finding the creative lifestyle to be more conducive to writing than the non-creative one. There must be something about already having neurons firing creatively that makes further explosions all the more accessible…

If I might add my two-bit, some good writers gather materials from their own experiences at work, what ever it may be – whaler, pet doctor, food taster, garbage man., fire fighter. It is not so much the job that counts, but the passion to translate feeling into writing.