I guess we're on a Christmas hiatus here, sort of. Meanwhile, here's something that caught my eye:
Woman Fired For Writing a Book at Work. Hey -- JRL wrote his second book at work, in between answering the phone and taking admission at an art museum. How many other books were written on the clock? Many! It's a fine tradition. She should have been more stealthy. (Note to my boss, Gary: I wouldn't think of it.)
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Bosses everywhere raise an eyebrow; workers everywhere wonder if they remembered to get that draft off of the printer before leaving for Christmas. Ha!
Hope you're enjoying the holiday...
The worst part of the thing isn't her getting fired, it's her being denied unemployment benefits while she finds a new job. Ouch.
One of my bosses in publishing was terribly afraid that I was doing personal work at work. She became irate if I typed too fast. Needless to say, I've never looked back since I left the industry.
I wonder how stealthy you can even be these days because if a company really wants to monitor everything you do, all they have to do is install software on your computer to see what you're doing, while you do it. My friend has that installed on his father's computer so he can go into the computer and fix things remotely instead of trying to understand what his problem is over the phone. Because of this he's had the misfortune of seeing what porn his father is trolling on the 'net.
What? Not write at work?
At work, when I write I'm not distracted by the dogs, I'm not jumping up to fix something to eat, I'm not managing my fantasy football team, I'm not thinking about the yard, I'm not downloading porn, and I'm not playing sudoku.
I get WAY more writing done at work. If I ever get published and quit my day job, I'm in trouble.
I suspect most American novels are presently written at temp jobs.
See, her mistake was writing on her work computer. I did all my writing on notepads and later on my own laptop. Of course, my boss would always walk in and say, "How's the book coming?" So I probably didn't have a typical job...I even thanked the museum in the acknowledgements!
I love this blog.
When I temped for B&N at one of their corporate offices here in NY, one of the temp bosses said to a temp- "If I catch you using this phone again I'm going to use this cord and choke you until you can't breathe anymore."
If you get a good low key gig though, it can be pretty productive as far as writing goes.
Teaching is good - you can make the kids do silent reading and write away. Of course, I am only joking.
I think Vollmann wrote his first novel while working as an office monkey. Does that sound right?
I didn't know that about Vollman, but like I said--I'm willing to bet it's so common that it's hardly even worth mentioning. What would be remarkable is somebody saying they worked on their first novel every night when they got home from a 12-hour day at the office. Most people I know who tried that one just gave up.
Writers need writer jobs--the kind where you're given a finite amount of work to do in a day, and are left alone to do it. And then you finish it by 10:30 and spend the rest of the time doing your real work.
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