There is a terrible danger in writing for your day job if you want to write fiction "in your spare time." Good quality fiction and nonfiction draw from the same well, and when the well's dry, it's dry.
Back in the midlate 70s and early 80s I was doing pretty well in SF, selling material regularly (if not for a lot of money) and even getting a little critical mention, plus a double Hugo nomination in 1981. I was workshopping with the Chicago powers (Gene Wolfe, A. J. Budrys, George R. R. Martin, among others) and later learning at the knee of Nancy Kress in Rochester NY. In 1983 I started selling computer-related articles to various tech magazines, and at the end of 1984 I took a job with Ziff-Davis Publishing as tech editor of one of their lead magazines, a job that involved a lot of "developmental editing" (translation: heavy rewrites of illiterate material from tech people who could not write worth a dime) and regular contributions of my own original articles. I soon had a monthly column. I loved the work, and tore into it with a fury.
And by the time I got home, the well was dry. I didn't write any more SF until I became unemployed for 18 months in 1988, and didn't write much fiction at all until my publishing company grew to the point where I was "kicked upstairs" and did more managing and planning than writing and editing. At that point the floodgates opened again, and I did a 145,000 word novel in 18 months while still working full-time as #2 man at Arizona's largest book publisher.
Some people have a near-infinite supply of words in them. Most do not. I certainly didn't, even as a relatively young man. It isn't how hard you work. It's what you do.
Most of my computer tech writing is long obsolete and largely forgotten, and while I did well financially and was reasonably well-known back in the day, in my darker moments I find myself admitting that tech writing ate my SF career before it ever quite got off the ground.
I heard this at Clarion: "If you want to write SF, don't be a writer in your day job." I think it was Damon Knight's advice. It's true. My only defense is that it paid well; nay, very well. I think I made the right decision, which doesn't mean I don't regret it now and then.
no subject
Back in the midlate 70s and early 80s I was doing pretty well in SF, selling material regularly (if not for a lot of money) and even getting a little critical mention, plus a double Hugo nomination in 1981. I was workshopping with the Chicago powers (Gene Wolfe, A. J. Budrys, George R. R. Martin, among others) and later learning at the knee of Nancy Kress in Rochester NY. In 1983 I started selling computer-related articles to various tech magazines, and at the end of 1984 I took a job with Ziff-Davis Publishing as tech editor of one of their lead magazines, a job that involved a lot of "developmental editing" (translation: heavy rewrites of illiterate material from tech people who could not write worth a dime) and regular contributions of my own original articles. I soon had a monthly column. I loved the work, and tore into it with a fury.
And by the time I got home, the well was dry. I didn't write any more SF until I became unemployed for 18 months in 1988, and didn't write much fiction at all until my publishing company grew to the point where I was "kicked upstairs" and did more managing and planning than writing and editing. At that point the floodgates opened again, and I did a 145,000 word novel in 18 months while still working full-time as #2 man at Arizona's largest book publisher.
Some people have a near-infinite supply of words in them. Most do not. I certainly didn't, even as a relatively young man. It isn't how hard you work. It's what you do.
Most of my computer tech writing is long obsolete and largely forgotten, and while I did well financially and was reasonably well-known back in the day, in my darker moments I find myself admitting that tech writing ate my SF career before it ever quite got off the ground.
I heard this at Clarion: "If you want to write SF, don't be a writer in your day job." I think it was Damon Knight's advice. It's true. My only defense is that it paid well; nay, very well. I think I made the right decision, which doesn't mean I don't regret it now and then.