Writing is a paradox. It’s always been a paradox for me — a truth-filled thing that somehow contradicts itself at every turn. 

Writing is simultaneously hard work and deep joy, hobby and profession, something I do to make money and something I do to relax and unwind.

…Or, at least, it used to be.

The American dream seems to have evolved from visions of a white picket fences and 2.5 kids to getting paid to do what you love. Monetizing your hobbies, running a side hustle, being your own boss… it’s all in the service of some elusive sort of freedom that I’m not sure we can reliably name.

I left my full-time job as a marketing strategist in 2017, so I’ve been wide awake in this new American dream for a little over four years now. (And I am simultaneously asking: “Four years already?!” and, “It’s only been four years?!”) And during these four years, I’ve had to come to terms with both expectation and reality, and change how I work and live accordingly.

Near the end of my time at my day job, I was getting up at 5am to work on freelance projects, heading to work at 8am and working until 5pm (often running errands or doing other work over lunch), coming home for dinner, and then working on the Write Now podcast or my novel(s) in the evenings.

I don’t really know what I envisioned at first, when I left my job — the same routine as always, perhaps, except substituting 9-10 hours of day job Monday through Friday with 9-10 extra hours of creative writing? It seemed… well, it wasn’t exactly logical, but it did make a certain amount of sense. It was, or appeared to be, a simple substitution. 

Except it wasn’t. As it turns out, there were other factors involved. I was burned out from working 12-14+ hour days (including weekends), as well as months of walking pneumonia that I had ignored/refused to acknowledge. And if I’m being perfectly honest, four years later I still don’t think I’ve fully recovered. 

I also had a tremendously difficult time separating out what was work and what was rest. Again, at the outset it seemed simple — the stuff I got paid for was work, and the stuff I did for myself was rest, a.k.a. a hobby. Something fun that allowed me to recharge and regain my energy, that filled my cup and restored my spirit.

Creative writing has always been extremely fulfilling and life-giving for me. As a child, I would slip into my own world of stories after bad days at school of being teased and bullied — in writing, I was safe. This carried through into adulthood, too — after college, I worked a series of low-paying, unpleasant jobs, after which I sought refuge in creative writing. I feverishly worked on blog posts and short stories and poems and novels during nights and weekends, and it gave me back the elements of my soul that had been leached out through work. Again, I was safe. I was having fun. And I had purpose.

There always seemed to be a clear exchange of energy — work drained me, and writing filled me back up. 

Then, I started getting paid for writing. The dream, right? Getting paid to do what you love. And please note, this isn’t a cautionary tale about how money changes (or perhaps corrupts) a hobby at a fundamental level. I don’t necessarily think that’s the issue here. 

The writing I was getting paid to do, at first, was content marketing — marketing materials, brochures, blog posts for corporations, etc. — not my heart-deep novels or poems or short stories. There was still a clear boundary between the writing that was work (draining) and the writing that was rest (recharging). 

…Or was there? This, you see, is where things start to get hazy. Or perhaps I made them hazy. I’m fully ready to admit my own complicity in overthinking pretty much everything. Maybe you’re like this, too.

Because that’s when I made another shift. I set up a Patreon for the Write Now podcast, and for my new project, Girl In Space. Slowly, money began to trickle in for those projects, and slowly, I began to drop the freelance writing, the reports and brochures and blog posts for various companies. An agent with CAA found me, and soon after that I sold a TV show concept to Netflix. I created an evergreen podcasting course, Podcast Now, that helped stabilize my income a bit more and further fund my creative work.

And then I sat down to write. 

Writing is a slow, deliberate process for me — it always has been. This isn’t new. I’m not one of those writers (whom I envy, by the way) who can churn out 500 or 1,000 words an hour. For me, writing is a state of meditation, a lucid dreaming of story, a fused existence of body and mind discovering and channeling words. 

(Also, the Midwesterner in me just read what I wrote and wow does that sound pretentious… but it’s also true, so I’m going to leave it and deal with the discomfort.)

Basically, I’m lucky if I can produce 250-500 words a day. And there’s a word — produce. For me, creative writing was never about the production — it was only ever about the state of existence for me. Of creating and existing in a safe space. 

Yet I realize I’m not a charity. And I felt that my Patreon patrons probably didn’t want to support my hobbies, or me simply existing in a safe space (though perhaps that’s my own projections and fears at work). The TV network executives definitely wanted a certain amount of work produced in exchange for their money.

So I got to work, every day whittling down projects task by task. And I realized that the simple act of creative writing — even for my own creative projects (e.g., Girl In Space, the Write Now podcast) was no longer re-energizing. It was still fulfilling and meaningful, which is important, but it seemed to be draining away my energy instead of replenishing it. And in fact, on some days it became immensely difficult… and even painful. 

Had writing changed, fundamentally, from hobby to work? Was it as simple as that, or could it still somehow be both? And had the writing itself changed… or had I changed in the ways I perceived what was expected from me, and taken on new pressures? Had money in fact ruined a perfectly good hobby for me? And heck, what even is a “hobby”, anyway?

One of these questions, at least, was easy to answer. I looked up “hobby” in the dictionary and on Wikipedia, and it turns out a hobby is “an activity done regularly in one’s leisure time for pleasure.” 

Which left me with some questions. Was writing an activity I was doing regularly? (Yes.) Was I separating out my work time from my leisure time? (No, not really.) Was I deriving pleasure from the activity of writing? (Ummm… sometimes? On the good days?) And does pleasure necessarily guarantee rest or a recharging of energy? (No, not really.)

Wikipedia confused things even further with the introduction of hobby subcategories, an idea proposed by Robert Stebbins in his 2015 sociology textbook Serious Leisure. These three subcategories are casual leisure, serious leisure, and project-based leisure. The work I do on a daily basis (writing, editing, podcasting, consulting) sounded a whole lot like “project-based leisure,” except these projects are now what I do for my daily work.

And to further-further complicate things, I don’t get paid or earn money for most of the work I do from day to day. My two main sources of income (the Write Now podcast and the Girl In Space audio drama) rely purely on listener donations, and those donations could vanish at any moment, for any reason. I don’t have a contract or a guarantee, and my income is wholly unpredictable from month to month. Most of my products (which includes the podcasts as well as speaking gigs, voice acting, and consulting) are free.

But profit (and my perhaps questionable business plan) is/are not the issue here — the point is that money is not the point. I would do all of these things regardless of my income, as I have in the past and will continue to do in the future. Money hasn’t changed the nature of my creative work.

Which is where we come back to writing being a paradox. 

Because while writing is sometimes the greatest and most fulfilling joy in my life, it is also often difficult, frustrating, tedious, and painful. It is, again, deep joy and hard work, hobby and career. I am more burned out now than I have ever been, and I have less work than ever to show for it. I finish each day exhausted and troubled. I also finish each day content and proud of a plot hole I solved or a Write Now episode I released. 

While I’ve never worked harder or faced this many challenges in my entire career, I would also never go back to being employed by anyone else. It’s that simple, and that complicated.

“Writing is not a monolith,” my good friend Kate Brauning said to me once over Zoom. In other words, writing is not just one thing. It’s complicated, and I’ve found that it can change from pleasant activity to excruciating work (and back again) by the minute.

I think what I need to do (and yikes, I’m sorry this week’s newsletter has gotten completely out of control and very “ME”-centered), is understand and clarify what I need from hour to hour each day. I need to monitor how my craft is affecting my energy from moment to moment — is it feeding me, or am I feeding it? — and practice self-care and focused discipline accordingly. I might even need to add a “just-for-fun” creative project — or take up a new hobby altogether.

What do you think? How do you see your craft? Do you create for fun or for work — or both? And how do you rest and recharge as a creator?

Words & warmth,

Sarah