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Underground > Creation >

Writer/Actor/Whatever - what's your day-job?

Whisky Priestess

14:10 / 29.06.06

I'll start.

"WP has been a cocktail waitress, cabaret artiste and barmaid for much of her adult life. She has been temping on and off for years, for such organisations as the Knights of Malta, Tiffany & Co. and the Science Museum."

That's the good bit. The bad bit is that I've never had a job that lasted more than a year (and that was working in a bar), I've been temping on and off for 5 years now, and that despite my good degree from a good University I spend most of my time as a glorified secretary earning not-very-much. I keep applying for press office jobs but they are hellishly hard to get, and even if I got one it wouldn't pay me much more than I'm earning as a temp. It's all a bit depressing.

Cheer me up with your tales of Dickensian misery in the pursuit of a) money enough to live on and b) time/flexibility enough to follow your dream of a being a novelist/film star/rock god/cartoonist etc.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

14:42 / 29.06.06

"Sib has supplemented her bohemian writer habits through quirky white-collar work such as tutoring, being a technical assistant for a cognitive science lab, and project managing web sites for the Greek Orthodox Church."

My one adventure in jobhunting was when I first moved to New York and was just randomly responding to Craigslist ads. One was for a professional dominatrix job in a prominent New York dungeon. When I interviewed, they were pleased with my biracial look; being both blonde and Asian was a double fetish whammy.

I got two full days of dominatrix training for free. I know how to hog-tie people now. But ultimately, I found that I would never be able to touch strangers' penises on a regular basis, and this skill is necessary for CBT, so I didn't even start.

14:56 / 29.06.06

My situation's a little odd, in as much as whilst I'm also a struggling and not-published-nearly-enough writer, I have rarely - despite my best efforts - managed to end up trapped in a meaningless, soul-crushing job.
Try as I might to acquire menial work so I can dedicate my brain to more worthwhile pursuits, I always seem to end up working for quirky, eccentric little companies which are held together by sticky tape and a prayer, and which have managers and employees who seem to be where they are as they simply don't fit in anywhere else in the world. Either that, or I end up working for companies whose business practices are not quite as squeaky clean as they'd like to advertise.

15:02 / 29.06.06

I'm a writer, and for the last year or so I've been making my living by writing. Which is nice; but there's writing and then there's writing, you know? I'm not getting rich, and it's not blowing much air up my skirt, but service journalism is doing more than just keeping me from poverty while I plug away at my fiction; I honestly think it's improved the quality of my prose.

Anyway, it's a good gig, not least because I'm pretty sure I'm otherwise unemployable.

I'm a generalist, which has been both a blessing and acurse. My education has been haphazard, and my knowledge base is broad but not deep—meaning I've never had the concentrated expertise to qualify me for a high-paying specialist job. My employment history, consequently, reads as a record of underachievement.

Also, I've been fired a couple of times.

I have done lots of jobs in industry and academia on account of I am detail-oriented, good with my hands, and half-clever about computers; a miserable year as key operator in a software testing lab—sacked for inability to keep to the 60-hour-a-week schedule—and before that three years as a production assistant and eventually production editor for an e-publishing company.

My longest stint in any job was nine years in academic support services at a college. I lasted that long not because I was particularly good at it, but because of a combination of personal stagnation and the sort of institutional inertia with which any veteran of the academy will be familiar; one bit in the Harry Potter books that rang very true to me is the ghost teacher who died while teaching a class and simply carried on as if nothing had happened, while all the staff simply accommodated the fact that the old boy was deceased. I was still alive but had long since stopped kicking by the time I managed to get my sorry ass fired from that one.

Best thing that ever happend to me, in retrospect.

20:53 / 29.06.06

I have been working for a weekly newspaper for the last three years.

I am a writer, and working as a small town newspaper guy has been a great thing for me.

I recomend that everyone find something in their field and do it.

If you are an actor, get a job setting up sets, thats how Harrison Ford got his first role. Really he was working on the set of star wars, and Goerge Lucas needed a stand in, and liked him so much that he just gave him the part.

People say that it is luck to be in the right place at the right time. I say that that it is simply a matter of statistics. Have a bit of talent, and put yourself in the right place all the time.

06:19 / 30.06.06

I work for a Uni part-time (admin not academia), which is great for me because it's a really positive environment (even though my actual job wouldn't win awards for intellectual stimulation or fun). The trouble is, even though I'm part-time (30 hours per week), I still find it hard to find enough time to seriously get on and write, rather than procrastinate. But maybe that's just me, lazy by name, lazy by nature... I find it's hard to get the right balance, though, between working enough to get by financially, and having enough free time to write.

I'd be interested in hearing how people discipline* themselves; is there a thread about that somewhere? (Please don't tell me you all set your alarms at 5am and leap out of bed to get to your laptops before work...)

* I mean 'being disciplined enough to write rather than proscrastinate', by the way, not in a BDSM context!

06:57 / 30.06.06

Journalist for 17 years.

Whisky Priestess

08:57 / 30.06.06

Aren't you contractually obliged to add "man and boy" in a Yorkshire accent after that, Sax?

being both blonde and Asian was a double fetish whammy

Whoa cool, is the blonde natural? You must look a bit like STORM! I could see why people would definitely go for that.

I was once talking to a poet who'd done a lot of crap jobs and was bemoaning the fact that he wasn't a woman because "it would be so simple - I could always strip". A real head-in-hands moment for me.

Felt like saying "OF COURSE! Why didn't I think of that?! Here I am, blonde (at the time), 21, wasting my time doing menial work when I could just take my clothes off for money! What was I thinking? I don't imagine people will judge me or be rude or insulting or snarky AT ALL. They'll probably respect my choice, yeah, especially my boyfriends! You're right [naive male poet] it IS so simple to be a woman on the poverty line - I just have to get my tits out!"

So yeah, sorry, bit of ventage there. But it's no fun trying to make ends meet when you're poor and hungry for either gender.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

09:46 / 30.06.06

yes, i am naturally blonde and asian... come to me and be punished.

i think of procrastination as part of the writing process (obviously, since i'm here). i do wake up at 6 usually and write though, without an alarm.

All Acting Regiment

11:34 / 30.06.06

I'm a writer and painter and a musician. Ahaha. Well, you know, I try.

Anyone heard of the Tog 24 brand of outdoor gear? I sold several units of that shit, and I was doing really well, and then someone I worked with slept with someone who didn't like me and I got fired. That job lasted for the whole of four weeks.

I did work experience at a library when I was 15 which I always lie about and say I had a proper job. So burn me. I brought a sense of the wacky to the place.

Now I'm at uni and looking for any kind of job, at all, and to be honest I maybe wouldn't mind touching strangler's penises because it would be a bit Burroughs, so long as I got some kind of means for food and books at the end of it.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

13:00 / 30.06.06

it's actually a good gig for a writer if you don't mind the strangers' penises. it pays upwards of $100 an hour so one can make a decent living working a few hours a day and sitting around the rest of the time.

and in an attempt to feed the anal mods who like putting the (PICS) designation up, here's a picture for whisky. my friend max took it and a reviewer called me sibylline in describing the photograph, hence the moniker. i don't very much look like storm... maybe with bronzer:

The super-cool mirror picture

lilyofthedragon

13:55 / 30.06.06

That is such a great shot.

Whisky Priestess

15:14 / 30.06.06

Seconded. Lovely and eerie.

Speaking of eerie, though:

I maybe wouldn't mind touching strangler's penises

Are you sure Legba? Got to say I'd be a bit scared to choke their chicken if they spent their time choking other people ...

15:29 / 30.06.06

I try and dabble in most things creative. ("Dabble" being the operative word as very little ever gets finished.)
I was in finance for a couple of years post-school (good steady wage and all that). My disdain for banking, however, became so great that if I was ever to channel it creatively I feel I could create a masterpiece to rival the dark majesty of Munch's The Scream (but that is of course complete hyperbole, I just really hated banking).

I've since returned to study Film in college and have been living on meagre savings ever since. College finished, I now have had nothing to do for about 3 weeks (apart from cycles along the canal, rising at 11, light lunch with beer, sunbathing etc.) and with account balance perilously low I'm going to work/skive/work for a few months of Summer in a thankfully no suit, low pressure, reasonably high wage phone monkey job.

15:30 / 30.06.06

Would I touch stranger's penises for my art?
A thousand times before I worked in a financial institution again.

sibyline, beating Qalyn to a Q

16:05 / 30.06.06

thanks for the positive comments on the picture. i'm four years older so my skin isn't quite as chipper as it was in that shot. good thing i'm a writer!

BlueThunderArmy

20:44 / 30.06.06

I've worked in museum publishing since graduating from university... not a terrible job for a writer. Of course, without an art history postgrad I'm not going anywhere, so it's about time to move on. Plus, while working at a museum is very very nice, writing up art is not the sort of writing I want to do. Or edit, or whatever.

The last really terrible job I had was ushering for a theatre. Had to watch a really, really not-funny comedian, and was not aloud to sit or do anything that would differentiate me from a statue for the entire performance. Quit after two days. Woof.

10:02 / 03.07.06

Journalist for five years, then became a 'marketing writer'. Basically the same sort of stuff but with a plastic smile and even less creative freedom, although I never found journalism particularly satisfying in that regard. I've always found that the more satisfied I am with my day job, the less likely I am to actually write in my spare time. Since going into marketing I've been the most prolific since I was as a teenager.

21:06 / 04.07.06

Software developer

But bear in mind that after a number of years they don't let you write code any more and you have to write high-level designs and requirements analysis.

I try to write requirements in the manner of Elmore Leonard or Jim Thompson. "Lean prose is mean prose." Which is ironic because I have an American colleague who seems to be writing in the manner of Trollope or Dickens.

I take solace from knowing that Pynchon was a technical writer first. (And I think Thompson took Agricultural Journalism.)

00:21 / 05.07.06

astro has slowly moved toward writing through a career dominated by the letter 'p', from policeman to public servant to projects, with philosophy photography and a penchant for puns thrown in, but now wants to move toward writing full time.

i do quite a bit in the science centre i work in (with a crazy professor who wouldn't fit anywhere else) and this has given me some great ideas for material.

but wouldn't it be nice to have the luxury of time just to write the fucking book...

that said, i get a lot from working and will miss it when i'm mega successful on a bermuda island writing the next nobel winner...

Mister Six, whom all the girls

16:33 / 06.07.06

I've worked as a pizza guy, a shoe salesman and made phasers and sonic scewdrivers... all before college.

I took a year off from art school to find myself and ended up as a seller/gutter of fish at a supermarket chain then a third-shift donut frier before I decided to go back to college and get my English degree finished.

After graduating I helped get the first arts festival ever in the small depressed milltown where I studied. This meant I was paid to write/direct/produce and act... for the first and last time.

Leaving the shelter of college I temped and worked almost exclusively behind a desk aside from a brief stint at a theatrical lighting company. I still acted and did improv but... hated it the more I did it. Also hated my jobs, but in different ways.

Thus I've fallen down the pit of a square peg so continually rammed into a round hole that my rough corners have smoothed and if you squint I fit perfectly. Got laid off many times, have seen companies fall and burn, have been witness to numerous sketchy business practices.

Only working in the field you're interested in is all well and good but in my experience the job market in the US has gone from bad to worse in the past 10 years. Many of my friends and family members are forced to take whatever work they can. It's pretty normal to run into a former computer programmer working as a greeter or salesperson at Office Depot. Whereas before it was uncommon for someone to have so many companies listed on their resume, now I don't think companies plan to keep workers on for long. Pretty scary stuff.

I tried composing a comic about my work experience but I became so aware of the awkwardness of it all that the story ended up being tame and boring. I should try again some day.

Whisky Priestess

10:34 / 07.07.06

Sort of like American Splendo(u)r without the job security, you mean?

Mister Six, whom all the girls

11:35 / 07.07.06

Yikes... I'm not THAT crabby am I?

(Then again, I'd like to be that talented.)

13:39 / 11.07.06

"I try to write requirements in the manner of Elmore Leonard or Jim Thompson."

It would be fantastic if more people wrote business stuff in the style of Jim Thompson. Imagine a CSR report starting off with a breezy, likeable confidence then spiralling down into panic-eyed violence, paranoia and racism.

17:31 / 11.07.06

In retrospect, if I'd taken three years off and written a book when I was Uni age I'd be much (thousands of pounds) better off and have at least one book written. Mind you, a book by my 18 yr old self would've been awful.
Like most great writers I've had a load of random unconnected jobs, coffee shop manager, jobcentre work, recruitment consultancy, council admin and now phone monkey work for charity. Whatever is within walking distance of my house basically.

It's terrifying. I've been promoted in every job I've had, hated them all and left after a year or two from sheer boredom, wishing I had the time to write. For ten years now. I'm getting more and more tempted to take a few months off and grit my teeth against the poverty to get something substantial done- after all, I'm poor now working more than full time, I'll be poor then but have all the time I need- then at least if I haven't done it I can admit I just don't have the necessary drive and give up pretending to be a writer.

Lack of money is the root of all evil. G B Shaw

Actually my favourite Shaw quote (IIRC) is when he asked someone at a party what they did and they replied 'Oh, I'm writing a novel' setting him up for the excellent riposte 'Neither am I.'

17:37 / 11.07.06

The Shaw quote I should have used;
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
Tanner, Act I