What if a Writer has a Day Job, too?
How do you balance life?
How do you balance life?
I admit it.
I am not a purist, not the starving artist type.
I have a mortgage. Sometimes we have to eat. Sometimes it's nice to have new rags to wear.
So I came into this platform with pre-existing baggage.
Sure, I want to wear great big diamond rings like you other Medium writers, but I know I'm not there yet, and I have to work at it.
OK Don, how do you do it?
Well, it is not complicated.
I am not speaking as one of the highly successful diamond-wearers here yet, but as somebody who has seen shiny things and caught up with them all my life. This seems to be turning out to be a similar project.
There are only two items to master. Focus and compartmentalization.
Multi-tasking is only a term, a concept, a fairy-tale concocted over the hill at the Unicorn Ranch, that, in practice, simply does not exist. It feels warm and fuzzy to describe yourself as a multi-tasker, but you are really using that term to mean “I really can't stick to anything until it's done, so I'm changing the subject.”
I know I have just made hundreds of people mad at me.
Focus
This is the primary skill you will need.
Unfortunately, for me, it is almost the opposite of what my “monkey mind” enjoys and practices.
It can eventually be disciplined without being drugged or beaten into submission both of which are, of course, counterproductive to creativity. But that takes practice and sufficient sleep nightly.
Focus means though you may have the radio on while you are writing, you are not singing and playing your guitar along with the music. You are focused on your legal pad.
Just to continue with this example, you would probably not be writing well OR playing well when trying both at the same time.
Compartmentalization
Is also the opposite of multitasking. It is not a skill, but a practice.
We cook in the kitchen. We wait in the sitting room. We sit in the waiting room. You get it.
We go to the place where we do the thing.
Physically and mentally.
We don't absolutely have to go and sit at a trendy cafe to write. It could be over at the kitchen table. The table doesn't have to be a mahogany Duncan Phyfe, it can be Formica. It's just a compartment.
Some writers section off a certain time of day to write — it is whatever gives you the privacy to work with as little interruption as possible.
My other job involves people calling me. My last call last night was after 9:30 and my first this morning was around 5:30, so I have found that I have had to answer it during the day, and turn off the ringer after normal business hours.
I don't do that to be rude, but to have any existence outside that particular activity. You can do it too.
Many cell phones have a “do not disturb” switch that you can still allow your family to ring and call if there is an emergency while giving you some breathing room to write.
Finally
However you must do it, if you wish to write as well as live, especially in the beginning, you will need these two things
Focus on your writing in a compartment (place and at a time) where you can be alone with your writing.
That is the only way you can be fair to both.
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