(Slightly) Giving Up The Day Job

Writing has, until recently, been something I fitted in around 'proper' work.  I held down a full-time job and still managed to bang out four novels and a few plays.  Nothing so amazing in that.  If you're a writer you just sit down and get on with it whenever you can.  It's people who describe themselves as 'aspiring writers' or 'budding writers' who always moan about never having the time to write.  If you really want to write, you do.  I hear Noel Gallagher wrote 'Definitely Maybe' the platinum-selling first Oasis album while working full-time for British Gas. I wonder if they had Muzak versions of Beatles tunes piped into the office at the time...

One of the great advantages of being a writer who also has a full-time job is that you do not die of starvation.  It's hard to compose a decent sentence, after all,  when you're constantly being distracted by the thunderous rumblings of your own tummy.  Even a literary giant like Katie Price knows this, which is why she also flogs perfume on the side. I take off my metaphorical hat (in this case a luxuriant imaginary fedora with a natty feather in its scarlet band) to anyone capable of earning a living through writing alone.  Even if it's for Hollyoaks.  You need to be pretty darned good at scribbling to get people to cough up sufficient readies for it that you can pay your bills each month and still have some left over for useless iPhone apps and parma violets.

'Don't give up the day job' is a wise refrain every writer (budding or otherwise) has heard innumerable times.  And yet, once you've had a few books out and the advances sit there invitingly in your bank account, having effectively doubled your salary for the past few years, the question starts to form, pearl-like, in your brain: surely if I did give up the day job I'd have time to write even more books?  And do even more promotion for them?  You weigh the possibilities in your mind.  It's a gamble, no question.  But is it a gamble worth taking?  You've been poor once and found it not really your cup of tea.  To be blunt, you very much like having the money your full-time job brings in.  What if you pack it in and the publishing world suddenly decides it's seen more than enough of your witless ramblings and, rather than commission that new novel you've been slaving away on, would much prefer to go with a safer literary bet like, say, Katie Price (she's got this brilliant idea about giving away a sachet of perfume inside every one of her books)?  What then?

If only, you dream, you could go part-time at work - say, three days in the office and have a couple of days a week for extra writing and promotion.  Wouldn't that be the perfect solution?  The best of all possible worlds?

But they'd never agree to that, would they?  It's a wild, crazy notion.  Inconceivable, as that bloke from The Princess Bride would say.  I'll ask anyway though.  I suppose it does no harm to find out for sure -

Oh.

They said yes.  They actually said yes.

So I'm now part-time.  A part-time full-time writer.  And I'm churning out two and half thousand words a day on those days I'm not in the office, in addition to arranging lots of promotional events (as all but the best selling authors must do these days).

Now my hope is someone will actually want the book once it's finished.  If not, there's a part-time job going two days a week at my local chemist, flogging Katie Price perfumes.  The hours sound great.

Mark Griffiths's most recent novel, the sci-fi comedy for children aged 8 and up, GEEK INC: TECHNOSLIME TERROR, is out now from Simon & Schuster Children's Books.