why don't you get a job

"why don't you get a job" by the offspring & quitting your day job

Don’t quit your day job. You hear that a lot, when you’re in any kind of creative profession, and it’s either solid advice or an expression of disbelief in what you’re doing, depending on how it’s delivered and who is delivering it.

For those of you who don’t know, I did quit my day job! I’ve been writing full-time for over a year now, and I wanted to share a little bit about what the experience has been like, at least through the traditional publishing lens which is what *I* personally know. What I REALLY do not want to do is give any sort of advice at all, because to me this debate of whether you should quit your day job or you shouldn’t really all boils down to . . . you. Everyone has to make whatever decision makes sense for them — their money, their time, their creativity, their mental health, that’s it. Everyone’s situation is different. Everyone’s situation can change over time, and become different than it once was.

I have also drafted so many versions of this newsletter in my head, and have deleted all of them. One reason is because there is a lot of Discourse around this very topic going around Threads right now, and if there’s one thing I did NOT put in my own job description it was becoming part of the Hot Take Machine that feeds the algorithm. No thank you. At the same time, I think this is a very worthy topic that merits thoughtful discussion — if you’re a creative person trying to make any kind of living off your art, it’s a topic that WILL touch you!! — and I wanted to do right by it. My newsletter drafts in my head still come out disorganized and all over the place.

For that reason, I’m putting headings at the front of every new topic to try to give this at least some structure. I hope it all makes sense.

Money. I’ll address the elephant in the room first — money! One thing that makes being an author as your full-time career very odd is that your money is fluid, and ever-changing, and uncertain. You’ve probably seen breakdowns like this before, but just to give an idea, hypothetically if you got a $100,000 advance for a book (number chosen for ease of doing math lol not because it is a number I’ve seen with my own eyeballs):

$100,000 = $85,000 (after agent’s 15% cut) = $59,500 (assuming 30% taxes taken out) = three payments of $19,833 each delivered on signing the contract, turning in the final accepted version of the book, and publication

(I am simplifying this SO MUCH and could go into so much more detail about every single one of those parts above, including how they change depending on individual circumstances, the contract you’ve signed, etc., but I really am trying to just give an illustrative example.)

Contracts can take a long time in publishing, so you might not sign yours for a while after you technically get your book deal. And then the “final accepted” version of the book can take a while, too, and can be held up by a number of factors — some in your control and some not. Publishers differ on this, but getting a chunk of your money on publication and even after your publication is not uncommon, and really does push the definition of “advance,” huh? The point is that what sounds really sexy ($100,000 for my book?!?!?!) can very quickly become “it’ll take two years for me to see take-home pay totaling approximately $60,000” so you have to be careful.

Other ways you make money: if your book “earns out” its advance and you get royalties on the back end; if you sell foreign rights, film rights, separate audio or other media rights; if you can parlay your writing into speaking gigs or other paid opportunities; if you can use your expertise to teach a class or a workshop, hell I could be making money off this newsletter RIGHT NOW if I wanted to, etc. etc.

Other ways you can very quickly bleed out money (in a cute, tax-deductible way!): preorder campaigns; giveaway mailings; travel + table fees for conventions and other events; professional subscriptions; website hosting and design, etc. etc.

I am a very risk-averse person. If I went on one of those game shows that’s like “you can stop now or go again to double your money” I’d stop now every time. $5,000 is better than $0, thank you, and is more than I had when I came in! So this money aspect was really hard for me, when making the leap. I saved up for a long time to give myself some runway, which helped with the anxiety, and I have my “income” in a separate account that I now transfer over to myself twice a month for my “salary.” I’ll tell you a joke that never gets old (TO ME) is if I forget to transfer it right away and then I bitch about how my boss is late with my paycheck AGAIN and if she does this 13, 14 more times I’ll file a complaint. (I know I could set up automatic transfers, but then WHAT WOULD I DO FOR MY BIT?!)

Time. It often feels to me like our adult lives are just a constant tension between money and time. There have been many periods of my life where I’ve had multiple jobs, anything to cobble together enough to pay my rent — I’ve had side hustles as a substitute teacher, working at a paint-your-own-pottery studio (I was never trusted to paint any of the samples and I still have a chip on my shoulder about it haha), writing freelance articles for $35 a pop where it took as long to chase down your money as to write the damn thing. I’ve been a teaching assistant a research assistant a graduate assistant a legal assistant basically I lived to assist people.

And then I’ve had other periods of my life where I’ve felt like, man I would pay YOU just to not have to get out of bed and drive an hour to this pointless fucking job. I just want time and I don’t care if that hurts my bottom line. Keep your $35, this listicle really is not worth that to me.

I feel for anyone who’s serious about writing — whether or not you’re published, whether or not you make money from it — because it takes so much time. I’ve been writing pretty seriously since I was a teenager, and it’s always been something I had to fit around the rest of my life, whether that was school or work or kids or anything else.

I used to seriously daydream about a world where I had one job, and it was to write. The amount of number crunching I did! The blog posts I read not unlike this one, where people broke down how they made it happen or when you should make the jump or what that life could look like! More than the money, what I daydreamed about was the time.

And the time is a feature, for sure! I’m now living that life I daydreamed about and I don’t want to take it for granted. But I’ll also say the part I didn’t realize back then, which was just how much TIME it can all take. It’s not just luxurious days of non-stop writing — in fact, it’s seldom that. There’s multiple rounds of edits, pitch documents, research, emails, events, social media, promotion, and on and on. I’ve blurbed 30 books so far this year, and if you estimate approximately 5 hours per book (I do read the whole thing! I take notes! I look up the book to see what blurbs it may already have to try not to repeat anyone! I try to craft a pithy few sentences that sums up what I love about it in a way that hopefully might move some copies! Sometimes there are follow-up emails, social media posts, etc.!), that’s almost four 40-hour workweeks spent on blurbs alone. A lot of this is a labor of love, labor I am truly honored to do, labor that makes me think I’m reading books for my job?!?!, but it is still . . . labor. I’ve always liked that saying that the work expands to fit the time because I’ve always found it to be true.

Day Job. If you know me at all, you know that I read Ask a Manager religiously every single weekday morning. It was my ritual at my old office job to start my day, and it remains my ritual even now.

I love workplace culture. I know the stereotype of an artist is that we aren’t made for a 9-5 but I personally fucking love an office job. Put me in front of a computer where I can organize my Outlook into folders. Give me a breakroom Keurig over which I can say “not long enough!” when someone asks how my weekend was. I type over 100wpm! I’m efficient as fuck! Do you have any idea how capable I used to feel, how competent, how much I still dream at night about putting folders in their perfect alphabetical order?!?! It’s sad.

I romanticize my old day job now. I forget that, by the time I left it, I was so ready. Once we did an Outlook migration to 365 and it shuffled all my carefully sorted emails into chaos and when I tell you I had a mini nervous breakdown at my desk, I’m not being hyperbolic. Weekends never were long enough. I still type over 100wpm (I test myself sometimes, when I need an ego boost). I guess I could get a filing cabinet for the house if I really wanted to revisit my glory days.

The point is, not every day job is created equal. Not every day job is going to work for every person if they’re trying to also write, not every day job is going to work for the SAME person at different times in their life and career. I know lots of writers who love their day jobs and don’t want to quit. There are some jobs you can’t just leave and return to. Other writers involuntarily “quit” their day jobs because they get laid off, or something else happens. Sometimes, as Ask a Manager would say, your boss sucks and isn’t going to change — and you should probably quit your job regardless of your writing! Get a new job!

Like if you want to quit your day job because you’re feeling like THIS?! Then it doesn’t have to be a binary of Current Day Job v. Writing! It could also be a third option of just getting another job, going part-time, whatever else works!!

Some people feel more creative with a day job that doesn’t take as much out of them, mentally. Some people thrive with a day job that dovetails with their writing (like teaching writing, for example) and other people want to use their day job to get away from writing (in one of my daydreams I teach statistics lol).

For me, if my day job had been remote, if I’d had more than two weeks’ vacation a year (to be fair, I was almost due for a third week . . . you won’t be surprised to hear I am also a person who kept the Employee Handbook in my desk and consulted it all the time haha), if my health insurance options had been better, etc. etc. who knows! It might’ve changed my calculus a bit. This is all why I think it’s so impossible to advise anyone on whether or not they should quit their day job, because there are so many factors that go into it, starting with . . . well, what’s your day job?

Creativity. A big fear I think a lot of writers have, on both sides of this question, is: how’s it going to affect my creativity? How will it affect the work?

On the one hand, it’s ROUGH — waking up early, commuting to a job, dealing with coworker drama and deadlines and deliverables and whatever else, going home and then trying to find the time and energy at some point to write on top of all that. My writing time used to be 9pm-11pm at night, because it was after the kids went to bed and I’m just not a morning person no matter how hard I’ve tried (admittedly, I haven’t tried very hard). Those are tough conditions to be creative in.

But it turns out that monetizing your passions, turning your creativity into your source of income, putting all this extra pressure on that part of your life . . . is also sometimes not great for your creativity lol. Real damned if you do, damned if you don’t kind of situation.

I don’t have any answers for that, and once again I think it’s all about whatever works for you in your specific situation and with the way your brain works. I think the most you can do is really pay attention to yourself, where you thrive, what gets you down, where your strengths are, what you can do to give yourself some grace.

One thing I’ll say from my experience, that helps me to think about: I think I could’ve only written With Love, from Cold World while I had a day job. And I think I could’ve only written my next book, Never Been Shipped, while I didn’t. In both cases, I have no doubt that I would’ve still written SOMETHING, but those two books are very tied to their specific time and place in my life and I’m really grateful that they turned out the way that they did.

Mental Health. I know I was kinda hard on the Hot Take Machine that is Threads earlier, but I am genuinely glad that people are having more conversations around the intersection between mental health and this questions of day job v. not, and being transparent about their own experiences. One thing I’ve definitely realized — and being a full-time writer isn’t the cause of this, but it’s an exacerbating factor for sure — is I don’t think it’s healthy for me (/anyone?) to make my books or writing my whole identity. It’s one reason I’ve been off Instagram a bit (obligatory apologies for missing anything; obligatory beating-myself-up for not being better at social media when it IS a part of my actual literal job; etc. etc.).

There’s such a scope creep to this job, not just in the time and work but also in the way it can take over your brain. I used to beautifully format appellate briefs, double-check all the citations, and then I used to go the fuck home and not think about them anymore. Now I sit at my desk until nine at night, I’m checking social media on the weekend, I feel like I’m never clocked out. I don’t always feel capable and competent; sometimes I feel like I’m hovering around an aggregate 3.6 on Goodreads (THE ONLY THING I’M PROUDER OF THAN MY TYPING SPEED IS THAT I DON’T CHECK MY OWN GOODREADS BUT THE SHIT YOU GET TAGGED IN LOLOL). I know that doesn’t reflect me; it only reflects the internet groupthink about a book I wrote. But sometimes they feel like the same thing, you know? It can be hard to tell.

lmao when you identify with DENNIS REYNOLDS you’re in trouble

I was watching the Bucs game last weekend (the Rays are still my first love, but the end of this season has been a little bleak, sometimes it’s good to diversify) and they were talking about our quarterback, Baker Mayfield, and how open he’s been about his struggles with his mental health around the sport. “I had to remind myself that football was something I did; it didn’t have to be who I was.” That really resonated with me. I feel you, Baker.

A few things I’ve done recently that have helped: I’ve been reading a lot of books just for me, not for anything to do with my job. I read an absolutely fucking WILD Jude Deveraux romance from the library bookstore, for example, that was truly medicinal. It was so healing. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more off-the-wall the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES made a cameo. That night I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I’ve also set limits on a lot of my social media apps on my phone, so I don’t check them as much. I’ve been trying to actually meaningfully “clock out” at night and on weekends, which I’m breaking right now because I’m writing this at 9:30 at night BUT to be fair I took the whole morning off to go visit my friend’s class on literary analysis of Taylor Swift which was the best possible use of my time. I’ve also started writing a new project, which always improves my mood because the truth is that I love writing! I’m not saying it’s not hard, but I do love it.

Before, in my Day Job life, I was never embarrassed to tell anyone I still had a job. A LOT of writers do, I’ll tell you that. I think if anything, I was proud of the way I was Juggling It All — the beautiful filing system and the fast typing (I still transcribed MICROCASSETTES, did I tell you that?!?) and the books and the stuff at home. But the truth was that I also wasn’t juggling it all, and I was increasingly stressed and feeling like no one part of my life was getting the best side of me. Suddenly the filing was piling up at work and I was late to a book event because I got stuck in rush-hour traffic but I didn’t want to tell my boss why I needed to leave early and my nights were always filled with writing because it was the only time I could do it and on and on and on.

Now, I have to admit that I am sometimes a little embarrassed to tell people that I don’t have a day job outside of writing. It makes me feel, I don’t know, like I must think I’m Somebody. Like I must think I’m really Special. This is part of what can fuck with your head. I always feel like Icarus flying too close to the sun, like you caught me measuring my arms against the wings and were like, “What are you doing?” and I startle and have to say, “Oh, nothing.” It’s hard to want things, is my point, and this career is all about wanting things in a way that is sometimes very uncomfortable.

Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on whether or not you should quit your day job. I would say it depends, and nobody can make that call except you. Either way, I believe in you and also take care of yourself.¹

Currently reading . . . I’m about halfway through Destiny’s Embrace by Beverly Jenkins and having so much fun with it. She kicks him! She tells him he should’ve hired a farmhand instead of a housekeeper because his place is a pigsty! It’s amazing.

I also just finished The Wedding People by Alison Espach and god, it was so good. I am definitely wary of books like this that get a lot of buzz — I just assume they must be overrated, which I know isn’t always a fair way to think. But I was IN this one, I was so invested in all the characters, I immediately wanted to text eight separate people specifically to tell them why I thought they should read it. I am putting a content warning in this footnote² because I admit that it was something *I* didn’t know going in and, in certain moods, I would’ve liked to.

watching . . . My family are watching Lost since it’s on Netflix! My husband and I have already seen it (it’s one of his favorite shows) but it’s been fun to watch with the kids. My daughter came home from school just today, telling some story, and she was like, “I wasn’t trying to be all cryptic like Locke, but —” and it killed me.

listening to . . . I just listened to the Decoding the Unknown episode about the theory that Avril Lavigne has been replaced by an imposter, and I mean . . . *I* would’ve been able to work in a LOT more Avril-related puns, just saying. My deep knowledge of her oeuvre could’ve really come in handy. I think this theory is OBVIOUSLY silly and is based a lot around Avril being a little strange in ways she’s always been if you’ve paid attention, but I did enjoy Simon earnestly reading out her lyrics in his British accent. I also wrote half of this newsletter before I’d re-listened to The Tortured Poets Department (because of the Taylor Swift class) and half of it after . . . so it’s a little uneven. [My favorite Wedding Singer reference but also just true.]

1. My love for The Offspring has been well-documented (and will be on display in Never Been Shipped . . . there’s a minor spoiler for you), but I’m sorry I didn’t talk about this actual song more. One thing I’ve realized about my own musical tastes is that I love shit that’s OBNOXIOUS. It’s one genre of music I really respond to. Avril Lavigne, Third Eye Blind, The Offspring, The Vandals, etc., if you said any of them were obnoxious I’d be like . . . exactly. Love it.

2. The book’s whole premise is based on this middle-aged adjunct professor, Phoebe, traveling to a swanky hotel which was otherwise completely booked out by a wedding party. Her reason for getting a room there, it’s revealed fairly early on but still in a way that (at least to me) was definitely a “whoa!” moment, is because she’s planning to kill herself. She doesn’t do it, and it really is a beautiful book about this woman who’s felt so depressed and uninspired finding her way back to feeling alive, but yeah. I did want to give that content warning for anyone who might need it going in.