Writing around a day job
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R. S. Breed Founder
A lot of indie authors write around a job, and many of them always will. The books might grow into an income one day, or they might stay something you do alongside the thing that pays the rent.
So the day job isn't a phase you're trying to get through before becoming a real writer. For a lot of people it is the writing life, and it pays to set it up properly. Some things that seem to work:
Pick a daily number you can hit on a bad day: 300 words, or twenty minutes, something you'll manage when you're tired and cranky. Streaks built on a big target break in the first busy week.
Protect your best hour rather than chasing the most hours. If you're sharp at 5.30 am and useless at 9 pm, get up early. If it's the other way round, don't let anyone guilt you about mornings.
Leave yourself a note at the end of each session, one line on what happens next. It saves the fifteen minutes of rereading and dithering that eats short sessions alive.
Keep drafting separate from everything else. Admin, formatting, marketing and forum-reading (yes, this) can happen in dead time: lunch, the train, the ten minutes before a meeting. Drafting gets the protected hour.
Plan in books, not days. 400 words a day adds up to a long novel inside a year. Choose the pace you can hold for twelve months over the one you'd manage for three weeks.
And be honest about the job's busy seasons. End of financial year, school holidays, whatever your crunch is. Drop to a maintenance target for those weeks instead of beating yourself up over a row of zeroes.
None of this is glamorous. That's sort of the point.
What's your setup? Especially keen to hear from shift workers, because most writing advice quietly assumes nine to five.