The day (and night) job has been interfering a little with my writing and blogging over the last few days. That’s not unexpected — biglaw is a demanding mistress (and she beats me, too). I assume smalllaw is equally demanding, in its own way, but I’ve never worked on that side of the street, so I have no idea.
Last night I had a networking event to go to and got home too late to write. The night before, I was cruising along on the novel when I made the mistake of checking my Blackberry, and saw 20 new messages, all received after 8pm, on one of my cases where something had happened. The next day, it turned out to be insignificant, but it killed my concentration for the evening.
So I’m still working the day job, which is just as well since my total earned income from writing is zero, at least since college (I had a paid, part-time job writing news briefs and the local events calendar for a newspaper in high school, and I may have gotten a small stipend as an editor at the college newspaper; if so, it was small enough that I don’t remember it). The day job, as day jobs do, has its own demands, and that’s the way it should be; it’s why they pay me. That’s the gig, and it’s not a bad one. It just interferes with the writing sometimes.
Would I quit the day job even if Meet the Larssons sold a gazillion copies and was made into a summer blockbuster movie starring Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson? The Mrs. thinks I wouldn’t, or that I’d go bananas if I did. I’m not so sure, but I’d like to find out, if anyone wants to test me.
The Unfocused Life 