How to Be a Successful Writer While Working Full-Time: The Secret to Work-Life Balance

Chapter 1: Starting Out

Congratulations on taking a step to help advance your writing career. No matter if this is your first book or your tenth, I am here to help. I started indie publishing back in 2008, and it’s been a long and strange trip since then. The publishing industry was, and is, in flux, and the story I will tell, along with the skills I learned that I’ll share with you, will help you become a more successful writer.

But first, I expect you’ll want to know a little about me. I am the director of Web Technology at a large public university on the East Coast. I manage a team of three and am integrated with a larger team on enhancing the web enterprise at the university, focusing on a user-first approach. I am extremely busy with my full-time day job. Sometimes I am up in the middle of the night when websites are down, and there are often emails to be answered in the off hours or on the weekend. I love my full-time job, and yet, I had dreamed of being a writer ever since I was nine years old. I watched old-school Doctor Who back in the ‘80s, fell in love with Star Wars, read The Fellowship of the Ring, and played Dungeons & Dragons, hoping that one day I would grow up to be a novelist.

Back in elementary school (we called it grade school when I was growing up), I wrote stories in my Pac-Man notebook, drew pictures of the aliens I created, and started to formulate ideas that became stories. In my early teen years, my stories evolved into Dungeons & Dragons role-playing adventures that I tried to get published in Dragon magazine. I purchased a Smith Corona electric typewriter (that came with changeable keys for foreign characters when I wrote up my French papers for school). I started to submit my role-playing adventures and stories to various publications, but I kept failing time and time again.

At age sixteen, I wrote my first novel, and over the course of twenty years, I submitted it to more publishing houses and literary agents than I can remember. It was rejected up and down the block. I followed the rules of no simultaneous submissions to publishing houses and dealt with the frustration of never hearing back from places (even after I followed to the letter the instructions in providing a SASE [self-addressed stamped envelope]). If it were not for the digital revolution and Amazon disrupting the publishing world with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), I expect my story would end there. I would have kept trying to submit my book to traditional publishers and eventually given up.

In the last eight years, my output exploded exponentially with my publishing not only the first three books of the Cinderella’s Secret Witch Diaries series but also two books in A Witch’s Coven series, my first novel in The Realms series, and book one in The Jovian Gate Chronicles. To date, I’ve published seven novels, a short story collection, and a book on nonfiction. I took my dream and found a way to make it become reality—all while working a full-time job and raising a family.

I expect your writing journey is different than mine, but there is one thing that we have in common: We all started out somewhere and needed to make a decision to write more. No matter if you started with a short story, poem (I went through my sensitive poetry phase in the ‘90s), or novels, our desire to write stayed with us. If you do not have that drive, then this book is not for you.

What I am going to share is a story of failure mixed with success. I work full-time and spend (with commuting time included) eleven hours each day on my job. The remaining time I have, I need to carve up for my kids, wife, sleep, eating, exercise, chores, recreation, and you got it, writing.

Working full-time at a job and being an author who writes full-length novels is not easy. I expect you know that or you wouldn’t have purchased this book. I’m a firm believer of admitting and voicing what I struggle against. Before we start, I want you to say this with me: Writing books is hard. Damn hard.

Feels good to say it, but it might feel a bit stupid, too.

One of the lessons I’ve learned since I started this journey is that what I do is not easily understood by my friends or family. Many people think I just sit down, write, everything magically just gets done, and a book goes up on sale. When people ask me about how do I do it all, I can tell the moment when they’ve lost interest. People don’t really want to know how the sausage is made. They just want the quick five-second answer.

But you’ve made a decision to advance your career. And that’s a good thing. You’ve taken the first step to admit you need help. Something isn’t working for you. No matter if it’s the logistical aspects of writing, juggling various hats, or work-life balance, you’re here for a reason. The good news is I’m here for you. We’re going on this crazy writing journey together. And together, we’ll get there.

You’re Not Alone

A writer’s life is often solitary and can be lonely. We do research, read, and then sit down and write. But if you’ve not yet reached out to fellow writers, I am here to help. When I started out, I had questions upon questions, and several people in the indie publishing world helped me find the answers I needed.

You can do the same. Join a forum discussion on Kindleboards.com, a Facebook group, or listen to podcasts and then join in the conversation. For many long years, I tried networking in the wrong places. Back in college, I tried asking my professors for help, but they couldn’t help me because they weren’t published fiction authors. They wrote scholarly papers for literary critique magazines and had no background on the publishing industry. As the industry changed and indie publishing rose to prominence, I tried to learn as much as I could. But here’s the secret I’ve figured out over time: writing and all that surrounds it (more on that in a moment) is like trying to drink from a fire hose. If you dive all in, you’ll get blasted by a powerful stream of cold water that will knock you senseless.

There have been times in which I have been overwhelmed and felt lost on where to go, who to talk to, what to do next, and how to achieve my goals. For me, what I found extremely helpful over time is to look at writing as a journey that never ends. If I am traveling the world, there will be times in which I need to work to pay for my travels. I need to research to learn about the places I’m headed and then need to drive, fly, or walk to the next destination. I cannot simply just go to all the places at once or have the money to even do that. I need a plan, people to talk to for advice, and a quiet time to process and make important decisions.

Here are some practical ways to learn about writing, the business of writing, and marketing:

Podcasts

The Art of Paid Traffic with Rick Mulready

The Author Biz

The Creative Penn podcast

Kobo Writing Life podcast

The Rocking Self-Publishing podcast

The Self-Publishing Podcast Classics

The Smart Passive Income podcast

Story Grid podcast

The Tim Ferriss Show

Unemployable with Brian Clark

Blogs

Writer Beware

Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Business Musing

Kindleboards

The Creative Penn

What I’ve listed here is only a short list of resources, but even if you try to listen or read everything, you’ll quickly realize you’ll have no time to write. When I first started writing, I quickly became overwhelmed. I went from feeling lonely to being overloaded with information overnight. What will work for you? I don’t know. I can only share with you that I slowly added podcasts to my weekly routine. I’ll try a new podcast out, listen to an episode or two, and move on if I don’t think it’s a good fit for me. Or, I might listen to a particular episode if the topic is on something that I want to learn.

The same thing is true of blogs. There are many other blogs where I go to read and learn about writing, but I tend to dip in on a more regular basis to the ones listed above. If you’re looking to learn and connect with like-minded people, the few resources I listed above can get you started. From there, you’ll hear about other writers who are being interviewed, and you can then branch out and follow them.

I make time to listen to the podcasts on my morning and evening commutes. On the weekends, when I’m doing chores, I turn on a podcast while cleaning the bathroom, and it’s a great way to listen, learn, and clean. I love it! There are more writing communities online than either of us have time to participate in. Explore and slowly add to your weekly routine. Over time, you’ll take in what you’ve learned and start making connections on how to apply your newfound knowledge with the practical everyday tasks ahead of you.

Chapter 2: Defining Your Goal

What does the term successful writer mean to you? Do you want to finish your first book, produce a trilogy, or sell millions of copies around the world and become the next J. K. Rowling? The definition of success can be personal, financial, tied to fame, or a mix of all three.

When I first started out, I had only one goal in mind: I wanted to finish Lost: Cinderella’s Secret Witch Diaries to dedicate the book to my daughter. But a funny thing happened along the way. All those years of dreaming of being a writer suddenly rushed back, and I realized that I didn’t just want to write one book, but I wanted to write a trilogy. Back when I was sixteen years old, I wrote my first book and thought that the well had gone dry. Many years later, I wrote a sequel to Dorothea’s Song but never published it. I had created a fantasy world and thought I hit my creative peak young and would never be able to come up with another set of characters, let alone a new world.

I wrote some stories along the way, but I never tried to write another book outside the fantasy world of The Realms that I had created. I didn’t think I had the creative spark within me to write other books. I had no goals outside of: I want to publish a book.

I languished along in my twenties and thirties, and then something happened to me. When I turned thirty-eight years old, I was hit by my mid-life crisis. I looked back and saw all the hard work I had done for my day job and in spending time with my family, but I had not invested in myself. I had not set goals for myself around the dream of I want to be a writer. I had no clue on what to do, where to go, how to start, or even if I could do it. I felt like a failure and overwhelmed. My dream of writing and publishing a book seemed an impossibility.

And then the perfect storm hit: I met new colleagues at work who inspired me to break out of the mold I had set myself, and a spark of an idea came to me. Instead of tossing the idea away, I jotted it down and then took a leap of faith and decided I wanted to write a book. One day I was going about my merry way, and the next I was a writer. The switch, for me, happened instantaneously. One night when I was putting my daughter to bed, I was reading her Cinderella. I finished, tucked my daughter into bed, and an idea struck me:

What happened to Cinderella after she married the prince?

I didn’t look for the idea—I hadn’t been thinking about getting back into writing—I just allowed my mind to be open and be creative. Shortly after I had the idea, I discovered it wasn’t going to go away. I had written it down and needed to make a decision: Let it go or write the damn book.

I chose to write the book. I defined my goal and simply said: I’m going to do this. But the next step was critical for me. I started telling my friends and family I was going to write a book. I defined my goal for myself and then spoke my commitment to the world and knew that I was serious this time. I needed to hold true to my word.

My daughter was almost three at the time, my son almost seven, and I had an extremely challenging full-time job. When the hell was I going to have time to write a novel? I had no clue. The last time I had written a book I was sixteen years old and had plenty of time after school. Now I was a father with a demanding job. How?

It took me eighteen months to write the book because I had no idea how to do it. At one point, I stopped writing because I felt burned out and then needed to slowly force myself into the swing of things. But the big secret that I learned about how to actually make the time to write was simpler than I had expected. As corny as it might sound, I took the Nike motto to heart: Just do it.

After I told my friends and family I was writing a book, I tried an experiment. I took my personal laptop to work for a few days, and over lunch (which I began taking instead of working at my desk), I closed my office door, fired up my laptop, and started writing. After I did that for a bit, I came up with another plan. I started getting up early and wrote before work. I carved time out in the morning between 5:30 a.m. and 6:30 a.m. on an irregular basis.

Over time, five hundred words become twelve hundred, and about a year in, I had the first draft of my book.

From a practical standpoint, defining my goal helped me firm up my commitment, and then I could get started. My goal has since evolved because I have completed my goal. To date, I have published seven novels and one collection of short stories. My goal now is to continue writing books but to focus on broadening my reader base and achieving more financial success.

What is your goal? How are you going to achieve it? When are you going to start?

The best tip I’ll share is to make room in your life for writing. I cut back on TV, sleep, and entertainment (going to the movies, playing games, etc.). I made room in my life for writing, and I held myself accountable to that by telling people I loved. When I would meet up with friends, they’d ask me How is the book writing going? Some cared, some didn’t, but having spoken the words of my goal, and then making space in my life to achieve it, set off a revolution for me that years later I’m still at it, and I am working full-time at my day job. It is possible to do both if you have a plan.

The Hare Versus the Tortoise

Are you a hare or a tortoise? When I was a kid, one of my nicknames was rabbit because I was fast and had buckteeth. I used to flit about working