I currently work two jobs; a full time job at a bank and paper route every morning at 3 am. It is tiring and difficult but I manage to write most days. For me it's about scheduling a specific time each dy to write. I have an hour lunch during which I write. When I'm really into a story I can get several pages written during that time. I also carry a notebook wherever I go so I can write whenever extra time crops up. Like waiting at the doctor's office or something like that. I also sometimes use the time while driving on my paper route to dictate story ideas and notes. Like I said its tiring and difficult but possible!

Double life’s uncomfortable and seems unnatural. It’s against social merits. C’mon, is it not? The truth is: it’s about our nature and limits of our psyche. Original situation of Clark Kent\Superman shows it perfectly. Most of the comics’ stuff clearly imitate it, as well as greatest of noir genre. The worst thing you can do is to kill your own intensions through your constant self-dramatization of the fact that you’re shit. This is unproductive whining. One must ban those directions. Dig up the nature and further – the roots of your state. Spend time and find out the identical situations – there were such, rest assure. You must keep both of your lives in good balance. Try to take part in your unimportant life – daily job – it’s also highly important to accomplish things there as well. Incompleteness on all levels profoundly effects writing. Start to complete thing: wash the dishes, seriously. Through finding the solution in job area you will finally get to the essence of your own dramatic situation. I mean it’s there and its business is to wait for you to tell about it. You’re its only hero. Also came to mind these lines of poem (supposedly by Nicholas Klein) The heart is the sleeping beauty And love the only kiss it can’t resist. Even as eyes lay open wide, There is a heart that sleeps inside, And it’s to there you must be hastening, For all hearts dream, They dream only of awakening.

Hmmm. This topic came up just last week in an online writers' community where I participate. It's my response to one of our peeps having a difficult time. I don't know if it's on-the-nose or off-base, but, maybe it will help someone. My husband's first teaching gig was in a community that made "Witness" look modern. It would be a steady paycheck, but, not until the fall, and we were already up to our eyeballs. He and I, both working all hours, minimum wage hours, him trying to finish exams and teaching, me VASTLY pregnant, and late to deliver, at the beginning of the summer. Because we knew we were going to be away, and couldn’t afford to re-up the lease we had while paying somewhere else, we’d had to put most everything in storage and given up our apartment - but we couldn't move away from the hospital, and I'd just taken on a book assignment, on a deadline. My dad took pity on us, loaned us his travel trailer – not an RV, a ten-foot travel trailer that pops up like a tent – which we pitched in a park as close as we could get to the hospital while we waited… and waited… No phone, and I could barely fit in the shower, which was a 2×2? pan on the floor, and a plastic curtain you hung from the ceiling, with a lot of barely warm water. The bathroom? A public log-cabin latrine down a woody path. Our boy did finally arrive, but had to stay close for extended testing. His entire first month was spent there in the trailer and, every time he cried – about every three hours – people on all sides were treated to him waking up too. This was not a romantic thing, bringing “baby home to nature” or something equally silly. It was awful. So… a home the size of a couple caskets, with thinner walls and neighbours that shout “Shut that kid up, why don’t ya!” every time your newborn wakes, a sink that's smaller than your plates, dragging laundry along another forest path in the middle of the night to get to the “service area” where there are washers but no dryers, slogging baby and wet clothes back to hang up the clothes, to have the park official tell you they don’t allow you to hang clothes to dry outside, all while your partner tries to finish his teaching practicum and exams, and you're waiting on scary tests, and you have an editor freaking out because she can’t reach you by phone, and you have to, daily, produce pages and fax them from whatever the American version of Staples would be, and work every hour you can at soul-sucking other stuff so you can pay the park fee. Your printer and DiaperGenie are co-existing under a piece of plastic on a picnic table (with the printer cords running through a window that you’re taping around ’cause the mosquitoes are eating you and baby). It’s twenty-seven years ago, no laptop, so your table houses this monstrous great CPU, a huge screen, and your keyboard, and you and your husband are sitting on the floor to eat – with baby propped between you, a baby you're swapping off between shifts at the park concession stand because that's work you can at least walk to. The shower didn’t get any bigger while you were having this baby, so, fitting you and him in there is much the same as when you were vastly pregnant, except, now he’s wet and squirmy and covered in soap. Oh, and your in-laws drop over to let you know they “don’t approve.” Your in-laws who have two, empty, spare rooms. I sooooo feel for you, I do. Here’s the thing though... It still baffles me. I never wrote as well, as fluidly, or as quickly as I did in that travel trailer for those couple months. I wrote an entire book there in seven weeks that came back to me with TWO notes. That was it, TWO questions. The proofer/copy people made THREE changes in a 420pp manuscript – one of which wasn’t even a change, they couldn’t see the Staples-faxes page clearly enough. Seventy days later, it was #6 on the New York Times list. Life, work, family, finances... just the tip of the cultural iceberg looming, but, as long as you can write, or sing, dance, act... whatever moves you, you have a doorway out of everything. Fifteen minutes... five minutes... the length of your bus ride? In those other existences? Give yourself to it totally. It can make all the difference, to your sanity and maybe even your art. Do what you need to do.

I think it`s important to look at one`s own perspective when it comes to their creative sources. I`m a firm believer in INPUT and OUTPUT, which means that everything we produce has a source. If someone wants to create, then simply look around yourself. Learn from the human behavior, backgrounds, anecdotes, interactions , etc, of everyone you come in contact with. I am constantly being inspired to use real life situations and people as tools for characterization in my writing. Wanting to use my creative "voice", I`m learning how important it is to "listen". So on the surface, my day job as a restaurant host may appear as a menial occupation, but in actuality it is something that grounds me in an epicenter of countless potential material to work with.

It's perfectly possible to hold down a full-time job and write - for a while. Problem is, it gets steadily more exhausting, and in the very long term, it's impossible. In the early stages of my writing career, I was working part-time jobs in coffee shops and stores, leaving when I got a writing commission, and getting another job when the money ran out again. In retrospect, I'm really not sure if I was getting the best of both worlds, or the worst! But it got me to the point where I could afford to write full-time - and taught me to save my money so I (hopefully) never have to do that again...

I have a full time job as a doctor. Some days, I am far too physically and emotionally drained to do much or anything except flop on the sofa. But I think the most important thing is to balance productivity and pleasure. Take time out. If you feel you either must be at your day job or working on your writing career, you will be starved of creativity because we need to relax. And sometimes that gives the best ideas space to grow.

For the past twelve months, aside from studying, I have worked what amounts to two full-time jobs. It drained me creatively and left me out of touch with, and more critical of, my abilities than ever before. Just recently, I cut down on work, but achieving 'the balance' is virtually impossible for me. My workload is too heavy. As much as I want to balance writing and working, there are bills to pay and relationships to maintain. Being young, I hope to be able to devote more time to writing some years down the line. What scares me most, though, is my increasing worry that I'm running out of time. Like a doomsday clock is ticking down the minutes I have left to write. This probably stems from my wish to write, which conflicts with my lack of opportunity to write. But then again, who knows.

I work full time because I have responsibilities and I have to work. It is a technical job so everything during the day is logical. I get up at 5:30 am every morning to write because I want to. The stories burn within me and I want to write them. My creative side gets to express itself. If they sell in the future, great! I have positioned myself to hopefully make some profits in the next few months. Some days the work burns me out, so the writing has to wait, but I'm itching to write when I do have the time and energy again. If the stories aren't screaming to get out, take a break. Stoke the creative fire and then try it again. Just make sure you have enough food to eat and a roof over your head first.

Corporations are not and never will be places of "creativity." To be a "corporate" person means giving up the individuality, the discernment, the critical eye that is necessary to be an "artist." Corporate writing as opposed to creative writing is all about utility, information, and meeting the needs of the corporate audience, external and internal. The corporate life requires political acumen and gamesmanship to get ahead. Being inside the corporate structure is all about maintaining a particular lifestyle, compromising ethics, and never doing what is right, but what is expedient. One can be a "communicator" inside a corporate structure, but never a "writer," in the sense of being an artist.

No, you can't lead a double life. And, yes, the corporate life will suck the soul out of you. The writer of this letter mentions a "financial meltdown" that forced her into a "real" job. I'd like to know what she defines as a "financial meltdown." What was it she couldn't afford? Her pride, by refusing to move in with family? Overwhelming debt because she bought all the trinkets of creativity we've become convinced will magically complete the process for us? Live one integrated life and you've conquered 80% of the battle. The human brain makes up only 2% of our body mass yet consumes 20% of our energy. After a long day at a soul-sucking job, how much mental energy do you think you'll have left for anything more than surviving the night? The woman writing the letter sounds as if she's worked herself into a nasty case of clinical depression -- classic symptoms.If writing is a relaxing hobby with no yearning involved (click the link I've posted below), then you're good to go, and might accidentally become a writer of substance. In my writing group, it's surprising how many of us have habituated some of life's necessities, such as clothing and food. We buy multiples of a shirt we like so we don't have to think about what we'll wear the next day. I, personally, eat the same thing day after day because that's one less decision I have to make that sucks out creative energy (Hefner travels with a chef who cooks the same meals for him every single day). Steve Jobs accidentally created personal branding with his don't-make-me-think wardrobe. I wake up at 5:11 a.m. every single morning, regardless of when I go to sleep because it's one less thing I have to think about. For those with children or other very pressing needs that are minimal but demanding, habituate anything and everything you can think of to free up as much creative thought as possible. Downsize. Eliminate clutter. Live like you're a teenager in their first apartment. There's a reason why kids are so spontaneous and creative, and it isn't because their towels match the bathroom rug. Scott, you should dig this blog post by a fascinating woman. She up to her eyeballs in money and kids, yet she's always cutting back and back and back ever more to find the write stuff of life. She's also got some Jung in here. http://bit.ly/16rGIXU

[...] Go Into The Story replayed an ancient post from 2008 which linked to an equally ancient edition of Cary Tennis’s advice column at salon.com. The [...]