Of... The Day Job

Michael Bourret at Dystel and Goderich wrote a recent post suggesting that authors keeping their day jobs. He's definitely not the first; I'm pretty sure I've seen such comments on every agent blog I've read. Don't go into writing for the money; you won't make any. Don't quit your day job until you make enough money writing to cover what you make from your day job. Holly Lisle has a series of small articles on the subject too. I suggest anyone looking to quit their job and live off his or her writing read them first.

The problem with keeping the day job, especially where I am now (which is to say, working on the first, probably not publishable, novel) is that the paying day job has to come first. And right now (I wrote "write" instead of "right" there... I do that a lot) I'm out of my house from 7 am until after 8 pm. And taking a class. And then there's the whole matter of having to eat and, y'know, sleep once in a while. It doesn't leave much time for writing.

Most of the stuff I've read about writing professionally says that unless you can force yourself to come home after a long day of work and write, you'll struggle to force yourself to write if that becomes your only job. (Am I making sense here?) And there are the references to people staying up all hours of the night, or getting up early in the morning to write.

And it makes me question myself, because that isn't me. I just can't function on less than, say, 5 hours of sleep (usually need at least six if I've been missing sleep, which is often). I'll stay up til four in the morning on Friday and Saturday nights, but that's because I can sleep in on Saturday and Sunday mornings. But beyond that, I just can't write for more than an hour a day right now, and it leaves me asking myself if I "have what it takes." Y'know?

I know that some of y'all reading this are fan fiction writers. If you're diligently working on a story, how do you go about finding the time to write. Do you take your current project(s) seriously and force yourself to find the time, or do you write when you get the chance and whatever?

Un-published writer wannabes, you too. When do you write? How do you find the time?

Published authors (if any read this, those with and without day jobs), do you stay up all hours, get up a few hours before work all the time? Just with deadlines looming? What's your style?