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I've been writing full time for the last four months, and one of the most important takeaways I've found is that a "full workday" does not necessarily equal eight hours of uninterrupted labor on a writing project. Small thread, big YMMV disclaimer. Everyone works differently
For transparency, I don't have children/dependents, so my time is very much mine for most of the day. "Work" means writing and editing, communicating with my agent, promotional social media, updating websites, answering emails, but for the purposes of this thread, mostly writing
In the beginning I assumed that my productivity would increase in equal proportion to my time, and that I should expect to be writing for as long as I would be working at a day job. But creative labor is VERY different from other kinds of labor (not superior, just different)
Creative labor is slippery and waxes and wanes a lot more with my health + wellbeing. I use many metrics to keep myself on track, mostly daily wordcount goals. There are days where I knock out my goal in an hour, days where it takes 8, days where 100 words is an accomplishment
Some days I go past my wordcount goal, if I have the time and energy and knowledge of what comes next in the story, and in the beginning I though I should aspire to be working all day, every day. But MORE labor hours didn't always translate to more words, or even better words.
More transparency: I've written as a "job" before, when I was working as a romance ghostwriter alongside my day job in publishing. That equaled a lot of 12 hour days which I DO NOT recommend, I was young and invincible and had to make rent. So I know my limits and my stretch zone
ANYWAY, I had it drilled into me that to be industrious and productive (read: virtuous) you had to work hard for AT LEAST eight hours a day, even if conditions were poor and even if not all those hours were productive. Work was the /point/
So in the transition to writing full time, I bullied myself into working all day, every day, because I had no "excuse" to not be industrious. Workdays bled into weekends, mornings bled into evenings. Early on I realized I HAD to set my own goals + boundaries, or I would burn out
But now I'm re-learning what a "full" workday looks like for me, and accepting that some days it's a ten hour grind and other days it's two hours of productivity, answering a couple of emails, and then spending time with loved ones or doing domestic labor for the rest of the day.
I really thrive in environments where I can set moving goalposts for myself and where every day is different, so this is a good fit for me so far. And I have immense privileges and protections as well as sheer circumstantial luck that allow me to write full time, for now.
The point is, I'm learning. and what I'm learning is that all labor has value, and that oftentimes the hardest most essential labor in society is the most undervalued, and that maybe an eight hour work day doesn't really benefit people or industry across the board?
But mostly I'm learning to value my labor appropriately while still challenging myself to aim higher and preserving my physical and mental health. It's a journey and it involves unlearning a lot of myths around work and worthiness. But it's a journey I'm glad to be on.
Final bit of transparency: I absolutely expect I will return to full time dayjob work at some point in the future, and I currently freelance part time in order to supplement my household's income. I'm trying to take advantage of the writing time while I have it, w/out buring out.
Final YMMV: everyone in publishing is working so damn hard. This industry has brutal expectations and it's only homebrewed support systems that make working in it tenable. There should be better options/standards across the board for pub pros, especially the most marginalized
also i'm vv nervous about sharing this thread and don't want to make anyone's process feel lesser than simply because I work in a certain way. But I wish more authors were transparent about their day-to-day process and how their books get made, which includes talking about labor.
Forgot to mention! Reading (and beta reading, but that's its own thing) also counts as work! I remind myself that refilling my creative well and studying the art of other writers is an essential part of my workweek, and it shouldn't be skimped on bc it doesn't feel "productive"
