Living the writer's life can also mean being creative outside of the actual writing.
Let me explain THE STRUGGLE.
Writers usually want to do everything they can to maximize their writing time. Because it's our crack cocaine and we’re hopeless addicts.
This is why you find serious writers (but still short of stellar success) who go so far as to quit their day jobs. When they can't, mostly for financial reasons, that's when the creative juices start flowing.
Take Brandon Sanderson. He's a night owl. In his younger days, seeing that he liked to write at night, he took the graveyard shift at the reception desk of a small hotel, knowing that he'd be able to have long chunks of uninterrupted writing time. He wrote THIRTEEN(!!!) novels that way in six years. He sold the sixth one, which turned out to be Elantris, his debut novel.
The funny part is that even now that he's a multi-millionaire and has 20 employees (and a family) he still writes at night. He divides his days to make sure he's got two blocks of four hours. The first one is from 1 pm to 5 pm and the second is from 10 pm to 2 am. Then he goes to bed at 4 and sleeps until noon. That's just insane to someone like me who's more of a morning writer.
Other random examples:
Frank O’Hara used to work as a museum clerk at MoMA and he apparently wrote many of his poems during his lunch break.
William Carlos Williams was a physician who wrote poems on his prescription pads in between patients!
Another poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, was an elevator operator. And yes, that job would leave you with A LOT OF TIME to think and write. (Although poetry is fine but I wouldn’t want to write a novel that way!)
Vladimir Nabokov was a entomologist (aka butterfly hunter) and wrote Lolita during the downtime of his trips.
J.K. Rowling taught English in Portugal during eighteen months. In her spare time, she planned the whole Harry Potter saga.
Jack Kerouac typed away while he had a job as a night guard.
J.D. Salinger worked as a cruise ship’s activities director. He sold two stories to the New Yorker that year.
Another writer I know took a full-time job and decided to get up at 5:30 am to write before actually starting his day at work. Brutal.
When I started out as a young buck, what worked for me was to write after my day job (public service… ugh). I’d start at 4:30 pm and finish at around 7 pm. A few years later when I quit my job (I spent close to nothing so that I could build a reserve), I could finally write full-time. But then when the money ran out, I was forced to take contracts and work two days a week which left me three days to write.
It was a good balance for a while, although working two days in a job I despised started to eat at me from the inside. So since January 2021, I've been writing full-time again. And you know what?
It feels fantastic.
It also confirmed that this is what I want to do with my life.
But now the cash flow is running low so I have to be creative again. It's hard because I’m tired of making compromises for my craft and having to vomit internally every time I think of going back. I don't want any of those lame ass jobs anymore.
I was looking at a few options (like buying a book called 101 Weird Ways to Make Money—yes I’m that desperate) but to be honest, I'm drifting. I've got this Damocles sword over my head yet again and I don't really have an answer this time.
Except that it's time to draw inspiration from the greats and get creative.