When can you quit your day job and write full time?<\/a><\/p>\nThis question comes from time to time. Actually, it comes more often than I wish it would. People are looking for one answer:<\/p>\n
Quit now, write full-time, and you will make loads of money.<\/p>\n
I disappoint a lot of people because I never give them that answer.<\/p>\n
There was once a really famous, really successful science fiction writer. I forget his name, but not his story. He taught physics at a college and wrote science fiction in the evenings and weekends. He asked this question of himself often. His answer:<\/p>\n
When my writing earns me greater than or equal to my teaching salary for two years in a row, I will quit teaching and write full time.<\/p>\n
He followed that advice. In a few years he earned as much writing as teaching two years in a row and switched to writing full time. I find that to be excellent advice, and that is the advice that I give.<\/p>\n
An oft-stated reply is, “but I hate my job. I will die if I don’t quit and start writing.”<\/p>\n
My advice for these folks is, “find a way to cut your living expenses by a large amount – say 90%, at least 75%. Then you will be in a position to quit your job and try writing full time.”<\/p>\n
An oft-stated objection to this is, “but I can’t do that.”<\/p>\n
My final piece of advice is, “find a rich person who will give you three-years salary so you can live your lifestyle and write.”<\/p>\n
The reply is, “but I don’t know anyone who will do that.”<\/p>\n
Then we go back to the story of the physics teacher.<\/p>\n
Sometimes I veer off to a story of Stephen King who taught English in high school in Maine until he wrote a book that paid several years salary in advance. Once he had years of salary in the bank, he quit teaching and wrote full time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Dwayne Phillips When can you quit your day job and write full time? This question comes from time to time. Actually, it comes more often than I wish it would. People are looking for one answer: Quit now, write full-time, and you will make loads of money. I disappoint a lot of people because […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,67,5],"tags":[140,187,128],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-work","category-writing","tag-employment","tag-work","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":404,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions\/404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}