Don't quit your day job

Every so often the question arises, as it did this past week:

"How much longer until you can quit your job and write full time?"

It's an excellent question. Certainly there are writers out there who can pull it off -- you don't have to be Stephen King to make it work. Some of my closest writer friends are fortunate enough to be able to stay home and write full-time. Even from my informed vantage point, the line between published writer with a dayjob to published full-time novelist is a beguiling shadow-zone, like the landmine-strewn borderland between two historically unstable countries.

Back in the late '90s, I was a stay-at-home writer. My wife was working full-time, and I spent my days at the computer. Back then I visualized my career as a kind of early Wright Brothers aircraft struggling into flight. It might dip or even plunge wildly, but as long as I could somehow keep the damn thing in the air -- even a few feet off the ground -- I considered myself a success. True, I wasn't working exclusively on my own stuff and in fact, all the money I was making was coming from freelance editing, consulting and ghostwriting fees. But the money was coming in regularly enough that I didn't worry. I didn't have health insurance, but that was all right too, since I was young, fairly healthy and didn't have kids.

Almost ten years later, I work full-time at a hospital as an MRI technologist and I write when I get the chance. Ironically, I made and will be making more money over the next year with my writing than I ever did when I was writing full-time, but circumstances have changed radically. I have a family to support, and responsibilities unimaginable to a 20-something version of myself. The prospect of of dipping and swooping nuttily over the dunes of my own private financial Kittyhawk, barely keeping my ass in the air, have become about as exhilarating as a an unexpected jolt at 35,000 feet.

Norman Partridge, one of my favorite horror writers and a fellow who also happens to balance a day job along with writing, told me that he feels like he's bursting people bubbles when they find out he's not writing full-time. Like me, Norm did that gig once...and he discovered that the worries of no health insurance and an irregular paycheck -- or taking writing jobs that he didn't have the heart for, just to pay the bills -- were even harder work than actually working. And I realized that I knew exactly what he was talking about.

Do I ever hope to write full-time again? Sure. Someday. Will I be Elmore Leonard's age when I finally pull it off? Possibly. Who knows? All I know is that it's not what I'm striving for right now. As a writer, as a person, you always need to prioritize, and right now my priorities are taking care of my family and writing as well and honestly as I can. I've been very fortunate to see my work in print and, unlike the plane I was fighting to keep in the air, the quality of my work is something I can control.

All the rest is weather.