Writing | Medium | Working From Home | Humor

Being a Writer is Different From How I Imagined

Messier, fewer showers, and no dead bodies

I’ve always wanted to write. When I was small, and Enid Blyton was my favorite author, I would pen ferocious stories about elves, naughty children, and dead mice. Feedback from my parents was that my stories were rather too bloodthirsty for a primary school audience.

At school, I always did well in English and enjoyed writing stories. In my twenties, I dreamed about becoming a best-selling author but never wrote anything. The writing I have done is all corporate: proposals, workbooks, policies, and course content.

I was made redundant (laid off) last year, and since November 2020, I’ve been writing on Medium. And it’s not what I thought it would be.

I’m not complaining. I enjoy writing. I realize that I won’t earn much initially, and small wins delight me. The writer’s life is just not how I imagined it would be.

In my head, I would get up early, shower, put on jeans and a shirt, and sit down in my immaculate sunny office and write. I would have makeup on and look very cute. I’d pop out to lunch with a friend. Come back and do some more writing.

I’d be calm, professional, immaculate. And incredibly important.

Nothing remotely like what I described above, has happened. If I get up early at all, I either sit in the garden drinking tea squinting at the screen in the sun, or I’m at my untidy desk in my dressing gown.

My morning routine has taken on a life of its own, no matter how many Ben Hardy articles I read.

Some days, I get up, get straight to it, and write. Those days are great for writing, but I stay in my dressing gown and feel grubby all day. I don’t want to interrupt the flow, so I don’t shower until just before dinner. Apart from the dressing gowned grubbiness, these are the days that most emulate a nine to five job. A full day, in the office, at my desk.

Other days I get distracted and write as and when I feel like it. At the moment I’m on the sofa in the lounge, it’s two-thirty in the afternoon, and I’ve only just started.

I often have to jump up and stop the dogs barking at the neighbors as the window faces the street. My vision of being a writer never included screeching, “Shut up, you little buggers,” or, “Mummy’s going to come over there and smack your bottom if you don’t stop barking.”

I’m blaming my late start today on Ozark. We are at the beginning of season two and have had several consecutive late nights binge-watching. Without the nine-to-five office routine, there is no reason to stop watching.

When I manage to get dressed, I put on lycra running leggings and a t-shirt — I never run though, my running is also imaginary. I don’t know where my writing gear is, but it’s not in my wardrobe.

My hair is tied up on the top of my head, generally without meeting a brush on the way. I don’t have any makeup on. What happened? I’m buggered if I know.

There is also a noticeable lack of going out to lunch. Quite frankly, I can’t be bothered, not to mention there is no-one around to go out with.

On Midsomer Murders and the like, writers toddle off to the pub for lunch, then it’s back home for a few hours hard grind at the keyboard before dinner. Usually in a gorgeous country house setting with an adoring spouse. And wine. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy.

OK, they might find a corpse on the way home, but TV writers cope with getting dressed, writing for a full day, and actually going out. They even have alcohol! If I have a drink in the middle of the day, I immediately go to sleep. And I definitely can’t type.

My other issue is with my office. The office of my imagination doesn’t exist. It’s in the house that I had hoped to move into last year before redundancies, mine and my partner’s, brought our moving plans to an abrupt halt.

With each day, my imaginary office becomes larger, more sun-drenched, and has an increasing amount of fancy office furniture. Recently, it’s begun sprouting plants and a patio.

I drool over the corner desk I’ve seen at Warehouse Stationery for $529. I’m sure I need it, even though I’ve yet to reach a total of $25 income from my writing.

Perhaps being delusional is a necessary component of being a writer?

My actual office is tiny and has two desks side by side and a tiny window. It is supposedly a third bedroom or nursery. The previous owners created the room by knocking the laundry and a hall cupboard into one. Apparently, they ‘did it all themselves’, and it’s therefore non-compliant — this is quite common in NZ.

I don’t feel like a writer either. I decided to invest my redundancy pay-out into writing full time to see what it feels like. I’m not sure whether it’s impostor syndrome or cognitive dissonance, but though I am writing and publishing, I don’t feel much like a writer. Is this normal?

In a fit of optimism, I did change my LinkedIn profile to say I’m a writer. Is feeling like a proper writer a function of time, popularity, income, or all three?

I’m taking a pragmatic view. Going from working a nine-to-five for forty odd years to working from home as a writer is a giant leap, which will take a while to assimilate. Presumably, the daily routine will settle down naturally.

Common sense tells me that if I keep writing, I’ll feel more like a writer.

The more I write it, the better I’ll like it. The more I learn, the more I’ll earn.

Dr. Seuss, eat your heart out.