Guest Blog Post from Author J.M. McDermott
When Night Shade Books declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy in April (on April 2, the day Binding was scheduled for release), the Night Shade authors banded together in mutual support, and we all got to know one another a lot better, which was a happy outcome from a miserable situation. The other happy outcome is that Skyhorse/Start has purchased Night Shade's list, and our frozen assets will soon be thawed.
J.M. McDermott, edgy author of Last Dragon and the Dogsland Series, Never Knew Another and When We Were Executioners, weighs in on:
Working for the Man, Writing for the Soul
I have only written one novel while not working for other people, and it is not currently available. That novel was written soon after I finished up with a video game studio and was deciding what I wanted to do next. I knew I did not want to do video games if the trends in the industry remained unchanged, wherein the only real artistic innovation was happening away from the sort of studios that can afford to hire writers. I was fortunate to pursue an MFA at the time, so I could continue pursuing my writing on the side. As day jobs went, it wasn't the best.
The best day job for a writer does 3 things. First, it provides for the needs of the writer's family. Writer families do not like having writers in the family, sad to say. Writers spend a lot of time at home, but not really "at" home. We're working. We're separated from the family unit, pushing words out of the head and onto the page. A writer's job ideally needs to provide enough income that there's no resentment about how the second job starts when the first is done. The 2nd thing a writer's job needs to do is remain contained. Hourly work is best, I think, in shops where overtime is discouraged. You clock in. You clock out. The 3rd thing a writer needs in a job is stability. It is a myth that unstable writers thrive in unstable situations. Quite the opposite. Experimentation and innovation comes from the safety of knowing you don't need this next book to be a home run hit.
For American writers, there's this other thing to consider: Health insurance. America likes to bankrupt and kill anyone who is guilty of working an unconventional job, freelancing, or otherwise being different. That's a whole other bag of worms.
Day jobs. Get one.
I have one, now. I work part-time at a bookstore. I go in Saturdays plus a day or two every week. The store is haunted. The ghost's name is rumored to be 'Sylvia', and she generally stays in the upstairs office areas that are lightly trafficked. One time, I was working at the computer, deep in figuring out a thorny dilemma in the ancient DOS system, longing for my coffee back in the break room. I looked up, and noticed that someone brought me my coffee. It was sitting next to me on the front desk. I called out to the only other person in the store at the time, another employee, to thank her for bringing me my coffee. Pat was confused. She was actually busy in the greeting card area, away from desks and coffee, and the coffee had arrived on its own. This is a true story. Doors open and close on their own. Things move of their own accord.
If I hadn't had this day job, I wouldn't have this true story.
The other reason I think day jobs are critical is how writers spend so much time locked in their own heads, alone. We wander a hall of mirrors, and mutter to ourselves, and it is probably better for everyone if we get out of the house in clean clothes with regularity.
Another job I held, where I wrote MAZE, forthcoming from Apex Books early next year, was at the Kimbell Art Museum. I stood among the galleries, guarding the paintings. I asked people not to touch things. I stood staring down masterpieces. I eavesdropped on tours, and people in the museum. At night, and in the wee hours of the morning, I wrote a book.
At another job, I was a data entry temp for a large music conglomerate, in a very dull part of a very boring section of their industry. I typed fast enough that I could keep a browser window open to e-mail stories to myself to stay sane. I raced ahead on the data entry, and then I paused and typed out pieces of scenes and character sketches and settings. Instead of fighting traffic, I went to bookstore after work, to read a while until the traffic passed. I wrote Dogsland like this. Never Knew Another and When We Were Executioners and We Leave Together were built and drafted while I was supposed to be entering music usage reports and filing them for a company that consciously chose not to hire me full-time after I had been temping for over a year. The boss' boss had a conversation about how they would not hire me full-time, because it was too expensive to pay me benefits like a normal employee. I worked full-time in a respectable office and couldn't afford to move out of my mother's house and I had a boss that once used my Hyundai Accent for a blast shield in case the building exploded during a fire, for her Jaguar. She did this right in front of me, like it was the most natural thing to do, to use my car to protect hers in case of shattered glass or exploding debris.
And, I wrote about a city that would burn Jona and Rachel alive for the crime of existing. I wrote about wolves running in the dark, hunting the children of demons. I wrote about a city of injustice so pervasive, it is described as a fantasy version of "The Wire". I wrote about loneliness, never sleeping, racing from one life to another, burning everything down - everything - to a nub of ash if it meant that the love that scorned Jona's advances in the end might still live on somewhere. I wrote the kind of book that can only come from temping as a data entry clerk, eternally temping, caught in that strange limbo between employment situations.
The work is better for that, I think.
Artists belong in the world. We need to be part of something larger than ourselves. We need to work because our readers need to work and because we need to know what it feels like to be exactly who we are, where we are, and doing what we do, because that is the stuff that will fuel the engines of creation.
Get a job. It's good for you. You won't regret it. Plus, if you have more money, you can buy more books.
J.M. McDermott, edgy author of Last Dragon and the Dogsland Series, Never Knew Another and When We Were Executioners, weighs in on:
Working for the Man, Writing for the Soul
I have only written one novel while not working for other people, and it is not currently available. That novel was written soon after I finished up with a video game studio and was deciding what I wanted to do next. I knew I did not want to do video games if the trends in the industry remained unchanged, wherein the only real artistic innovation was happening away from the sort of studios that can afford to hire writers. I was fortunate to pursue an MFA at the time, so I could continue pursuing my writing on the side. As day jobs went, it wasn't the best.
The best day job for a writer does 3 things. First, it provides for the needs of the writer's family. Writer families do not like having writers in the family, sad to say. Writers spend a lot of time at home, but not really "at" home. We're working. We're separated from the family unit, pushing words out of the head and onto the page. A writer's job ideally needs to provide enough income that there's no resentment about how the second job starts when the first is done. The 2nd thing a writer's job needs to do is remain contained. Hourly work is best, I think, in shops where overtime is discouraged. You clock in. You clock out. The 3rd thing a writer needs in a job is stability. It is a myth that unstable writers thrive in unstable situations. Quite the opposite. Experimentation and innovation comes from the safety of knowing you don't need this next book to be a home run hit.
For American writers, there's this other thing to consider: Health insurance. America likes to bankrupt and kill anyone who is guilty of working an unconventional job, freelancing, or otherwise being different. That's a whole other bag of worms.
Day jobs. Get one.
I have one, now. I work part-time at a bookstore. I go in Saturdays plus a day or two every week. The store is haunted. The ghost's name is rumored to be 'Sylvia', and she generally stays in the upstairs office areas that are lightly trafficked. One time, I was working at the computer, deep in figuring out a thorny dilemma in the ancient DOS system, longing for my coffee back in the break room. I looked up, and noticed that someone brought me my coffee. It was sitting next to me on the front desk. I called out to the only other person in the store at the time, another employee, to thank her for bringing me my coffee. Pat was confused. She was actually busy in the greeting card area, away from desks and coffee, and the coffee had arrived on its own. This is a true story. Doors open and close on their own. Things move of their own accord.
If I hadn't had this day job, I wouldn't have this true story.
The other reason I think day jobs are critical is how writers spend so much time locked in their own heads, alone. We wander a hall of mirrors, and mutter to ourselves, and it is probably better for everyone if we get out of the house in clean clothes with regularity.
Another job I held, where I wrote MAZE, forthcoming from Apex Books early next year, was at the Kimbell Art Museum. I stood among the galleries, guarding the paintings. I asked people not to touch things. I stood staring down masterpieces. I eavesdropped on tours, and people in the museum. At night, and in the wee hours of the morning, I wrote a book.
At another job, I was a data entry temp for a large music conglomerate, in a very dull part of a very boring section of their industry. I typed fast enough that I could keep a browser window open to e-mail stories to myself to stay sane. I raced ahead on the data entry, and then I paused and typed out pieces of scenes and character sketches and settings. Instead of fighting traffic, I went to bookstore after work, to read a while until the traffic passed. I wrote Dogsland like this. Never Knew Another and When We Were Executioners and We Leave Together were built and drafted while I was supposed to be entering music usage reports and filing them for a company that consciously chose not to hire me full-time after I had been temping for over a year. The boss' boss had a conversation about how they would not hire me full-time, because it was too expensive to pay me benefits like a normal employee. I worked full-time in a respectable office and couldn't afford to move out of my mother's house and I had a boss that once used my Hyundai Accent for a blast shield in case the building exploded during a fire, for her Jaguar. She did this right in front of me, like it was the most natural thing to do, to use my car to protect hers in case of shattered glass or exploding debris.
And, I wrote about a city that would burn Jona and Rachel alive for the crime of existing. I wrote about wolves running in the dark, hunting the children of demons. I wrote about a city of injustice so pervasive, it is described as a fantasy version of "The Wire". I wrote about loneliness, never sleeping, racing from one life to another, burning everything down - everything - to a nub of ash if it meant that the love that scorned Jona's advances in the end might still live on somewhere. I wrote the kind of book that can only come from temping as a data entry clerk, eternally temping, caught in that strange limbo between employment situations.
The work is better for that, I think.
Artists belong in the world. We need to be part of something larger than ourselves. We need to work because our readers need to work and because we need to know what it feels like to be exactly who we are, where we are, and doing what we do, because that is the stuff that will fuel the engines of creation.
Get a job. It's good for you. You won't regret it. Plus, if you have more money, you can buy more books.