Ditching the Day Job: When Your Hobby Becomes Your Work, What Then?

Like many young writers, I had a dream…

Ditch the day-job and become a pro!  Write fiction novels that make enough money to support my simple lifestyle without needing a second income from another job.

As a dream, it was a big one.  The stats on writers' incomes are scary across the globe: I read that in England, the average fiction novelist with a traditional publisher makes less than 4000 pounds a year, down dramatically from the 1990s.  That translates to approximately $8000 a year Canadian, which might cover the costs of your nosh for a year, if it isn't too posh.  But forget living in your car for shelter, because you won't be able to afford the parking.

It took me twenty years of writing to be able to ditch my day job and live the dream.  That was several years ago now, and as I look forward to the release of my seventeenth novel, I want to talk about a curious issue that never occurred to me when I was yearning for the life of a professional author.

When your hobby becomes your work, what do you do for fun?

It's great to do something you love for your work. But in doing so, you lose that hobby that consumed you for so many years.   

In past decades, I wrote for pleasure.  I wrote when I wanted to, and when I was inspired to.  It was the ultimate escape.

Now, life is very different.  The deadlines loom.  You end up having to write when you don't feel like it, and when you aren't writing particularly well.  Which is what work is all about.   

And I've discovered, no matter what you do for a living, no matter how much you like it, we all need a break from work.  More so, we need something to take our minds off the novel in progress. 

So a colleague suggests to me:  why not relive the excitement of those early writing days?

You could write something else for a hobby.

I loved writing short stories.  And I still write at least one a year.  But that can't be my hobby. 

Like so many people in late middle age (stop laughing,) if I am on the computer eight hours a day writing mystery novels, and responding to all the promotional requirements of being an author, the last thing I want to do is spend more time on computers.  My fingers hurt.  My eyes are dry and achy.

Also important:  this hobby is needed to take my mind off my work.  Doing more of the same (creating fiction) doesn't cut it.  

That's the problem I am facing.  For most of my working life, I had stressful jobs in health care.  For relief from that, I turned to writing.  And writing was a fabulous hobby.  

But now that writing books is my work, I am without a hobby.  And I find it hard to find a new interest to obsess me so late in life.  Yes, I read, knit a bit, bake.  But none of those are obsessions the way writing was.

 The search for a hobby.

My LIL (live in lover) also known as the Emergency Contact, is a fanatic golfer.  He tells me that all the pro golfers work on their game every day like the full time job it is.  But that's their work, and they do other things for fun.  Some fish, for example.

Fellow Canadian Linwood Barclay makes the bestseller lists everywhere.  In his downtime, he has a world-class model railway system in his home that gives him pleasure and satisfaction outside of our frantic author world.

Friend and colleague Vicki Delany does jigsaw puzzles. And I mean billion-piece, gorgeous puzzles that should be framed and displayed as art.  She says: 

"It clears my mind completely. I find that I never think about my books or my writing when I'm working on one."

That's what I'm missing now.  A hobby that will take me out of my work, so that I can return refreshed and invigorated.  Something besides eating (at which, granted, I am simply world-class.)

Trickier than I thought.  It's sort of like when you try to find a new best friend later in life.  Most people have had their best friend for decades, just as they've had their beloved hobbies.

So all you out there who think you'd like to make the move from part-time to full time, think about it carefully before you make the jump.  At the very least, go into it with clearer eyes than I did.

Do I regret it?  Not a whistle!  This is what I was meant to do, and finally, I'm doing it.  

But damn, I'd love to add something fun to my life to take the place of the glorious hobby I once had.

Anybody else facing the same dilemma?  I'd love to hear from other plotters on this!

Melodie's latest book, The Merry Widow Murders, will be out in May 2022.  If you've read the mob caper series starting with The Goddaughter, you'll get a kick out of meeting Gina Gallo's great-grandmother in this new series!