I was driving through Thetford Forest on a mild, autumn day, when my phone rang. I pulled over the compacted earth beneath dappling beech and took the call.
“Congratulations, we’d like to offer you the job!”
I had been unemployed for three months, job-hunting for five, and I was starting to fear this moment would never come. But the news didn’t make the sun seem warmer, or the day seem brighter. I got out of the car and walked into the forest. The air was sweet and soft, the earth warm and fruitful with an array of fungi. I tried to let them pull me out of my own thoughts and into joy again but, all the time, the fear was swirling. I had so wanted this job, it was so perfect for me and felt like it would set me on the kind of path I wanted to take but, now it was here, a huge, dark door in front of me, I didn’t know if I really wanted to step through.
Here it was, the big fear: if I took a full-time job, it would destroy my writing.
Until that moment, every time I had worked full-time, it was at the expense of my writing and, long-term, that made me deeply unhappy. If I took this job, was I making the same mistake again? Would I look back in a year, two years, three, and realise all the time I had wasted and see that my life was unhappy again?
I thought about it for a week before accepting.
And, the reason I accepted?
I wasn’t going into this one with my eyes shut like I had with the others. I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer but, now, I know how much I want it. I want it more than anything. And, for the first time in my life I believe, if I keep working at it, it is possible.
The reason I’ve coped with a lack of money and stability before now is because it gave me more time to write. Now that I needed more financial stability, it could not be at the expense of this dream. I had applied for this role because it looked like it would supplement and enhance the skills and knowledge, I need to sustain a good writing career.
Being a full-time writer is complicated. Most writers don’t get offered an annual publishing deal that can behave like a salary. And, even if they do, it isn’t usually enough to cloister yourself away and write books. Except in extraordinary circumstances, to sustain a career, a writer has to engage with people outside of their books too. That could be social media or blogging, article writing for newspapers and magazines, giving talks and readings or running workshops. It might be being part of festival or judging panels, hosting events, running a podcast or a YouTube channel. It certainly involves maintaining an engaged and growing mailing list. And, ultimately, all these things combined, suddenly mean you’re running your own business. So, then, it’s a bonus if you have basic book-keeping, tax form filling out, record keeping, invoicing, pitching, marketing, web design skills. It’s a lot. But this job promised to test, hone and build those skills.
This is how it’s gone so far.
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