avatarJanice Harayda

Summary

The article discusses five renowned authors who left their day jobs to pursue writing, drawing lessons from their bold career moves.

Abstract

The article "Five Famous Writers Who Ignored The Advice, ‘Don’t Quit Your Day Job’" explores the stories of William Faulkner, Harper Lee, Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, and Winston Groom, all of whom made the pivotal decision to resign from their respective careers to focus on their writing. It emphasizes the importance of recognizing when a job is not the right fit, as in the case of Faulkner's ill-suited postmaster role, and the value of taking risks, such as Lee's departure from her airline job after receiving financial support to write full-time. The narrative also touches on the influence of personal connections and the necessity of change, as seen in Didion's move back to California, which inspired some of her most acclaimed work. Morrison's departure from Random House amidst industry racism and Groom's exit from legal reporting to avoid being trapped in journalism are highlighted as decisions that led to greater literary achievements. The article suggests that sometimes, leaving a stable job can be a crucial step in fulfilling one's potential as a writer.

Opinions

  • The author implies that certain jobs may be detrimental to one's creative aspirations, as evidenced by Faulkner's inability to fulfill his postmaster duties while aspiring to write.
  • The article suggests that financial stability, such as the gift Harper Lee received, can be a significant enabler for writers to focus on their craft.
  • It conveys that personal circumstances, like homesickness in Didion's case, can play a critical role in making life-changing career decisions.
  • The author points out that workplace prejudice, as experienced by Morrison, can hinder professional growth and that leaving such an environment can lead to greater success.
  • The article posits that the discipline to write, as exemplified by Groom and contrasted with the cliché of the journalist with an unfinished novel, is essential for aspiring writers who hold day jobs.
  • The underlying message is one of encouragement for writers to take the leap and prioritize their writing, even if it means leaving the security of a day job.

Five Famous Writers Who Ignored The Advice, ‘Don’t Quit Your Day Job’

Why writers from William Faulkner to Joan Didion resigned and what their bold moves teach you

Joan Didion, whose work inspired the Netflix movie, “Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold” / Netflix

In my first three years after college, I quit two day jobs — one after 10 months, and one after eight. Those moves may have been the best I ever made as a writer and editor.

On my third stab at full-time employment, I ended up as a staff writer at Glamour. I stayed for eight years, editing a monthly section of short unsigned articles before moving up to bylined longform stories. In that time, I built a portfolio that led to many writing assignments elsewhere while acquiring skills that have helped at every stage of my career.

My moves weren’t seen as flighty in publishing. Salaries at high-gloss magazines were low because the perks abounded: trips to Hollywood, lunches at the Plaza with celebrities, free or discounted clothes and makeup samples. It was accepted that if you wanted to earn enough to live on as young writer in New York City, you’d need to move around.

I could take three jobs in less than 20 months because my industry allowed it and Manhattan was the epicenter of publishing, so that each time I quit, I had a better offer in hand. Had I lived in a small town in the Deep South, as I do now, I might have short-circuited my career prematurely.

Yet many successful writers quit their day jobs, without regret, at later ages or in places far beyond New York City. Here are five who did and what you can learn from their experiences.

A first day cover of a Faulkner postage stamp / USPS Fair use via OpenCulture

William Faulkner

The job he quit: Postmaster for the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi

Why he left: Faulkner was a terrible postmaster. He opened and closed the P.O. at will, played golf during office hours, and wrote when he was supposed to be sorting mail. After a reprimand from the postal service made clear that he might be fired, he quit. He said in his resignation letter:

“As long as I live under the capitalistic system, I expect to have my life influenced by the demands of moneyed people. But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp.”

What happened afterward: Twenty-five years later, Faulkner won the Nobel Prize for literature, and in 1987, the U.S. Post Office issued a 22-cent stamp in his honor.

What you can learn from his experience: Some jobs are such a poor fit with your abilities, it makes sense to quit before you get fired. It doesn’t mean you can’t win a Nobel someday.

Harper Lee with President George W. Bush / White House photo via Wikimedia Commons

Harper Lee

The job she quit: Reservations clerk for British Overseas Airways in New York

Why she left: Lee had been writing on the side, and after a literary agent encouraged her to develop a short story into a novel, friends gave her year’s salary as a Christmas gift that enabled her to do that.

What happened afterward: She won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize for To Kill a Mockingbird, and it became one of the bestselling novels of all time.

What you can learn from her experience: You can try to move forward as a writer even if you work in a wildly unrelated field. If Lee hadn’t sent a story to an agent, she might not have received the windfall that let her pursue her dream.

Covers of some of Joan Didion’s books / Penguin Random House

Joan Didion

The job she quit: Associate feature editor of Vogue magazine in New York

Why she left: Didion married the writer John Gregory Dunne and, homesick for her native state, moved back to California.

What happened afterward: Didion wrote a famous essay about leaving New York, “Goodbye to All That,” and some of the century’s best books about California, including Slouching Towards Bethlehem. After 24 years in Los Angeles, she and Dunne returned to Manhattan, because, she said, “We felt was time to make a change.”

What you can learn from her experience: Sometimes homesickness has no cure except moving home, and an uprooting isn’t necessarily fatal.

Wall mural of Toni Morrison in Spain / Zarateman on Wikimedia Commons CC

Toni Morrison

The job she quit: An editor at Random House in New York

Why she left: Morrison worked at Random House while writing her first three novels: The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Son of Solomon. She was one of the few black editors in a largely white industry, and not all of her colleagues shared her enthusiasm for what she wanted to publish. Morrison resigned in 1983 as her novels became more successful and the books she edited sold less well than she had hoped.

“Leaving was a good idea,” she wrote in the preface to her 1987 novel, Beloved. “The books I had edited were not earning scads of money.”

What happened afterward: Beloved became a touchstone of American fiction, and Morrison won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993.

What you can learn from her experience: All kinds of prejudice can make it harder to achieve your goals at work: racism, sexism, ageism, and more. You have to decide whether it makes more sense to fight the bias from within or leave and continue the battle on another front.

Winston Groom, author of “Forrest Gump” / Liveright books via NPR

Winston Groom

The job he quit: Legal reporter for the Washington Star in Washington, D.C.

Why he left: Groom met four U.S. presidents on the job, but by the time he left the Star 1976, “they had started paying me pretty well, and it became clear to me that if I wasn’t careful I’d wind up in journalism the rest of my life,” he said in an essay in the collection, Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and The Day Jobs They Quit.

“So one day I resigned. Not only that, but I sort of cut my umbilical cord, too. Deliberately. I told them I was leaving to write a book — a novel about the Vietnam War [which became Better Times Than These].

“I knew that in many of those desks in the back of the newsroom where I sat, old reporters kept, above all else, three things: a pack of cigarettes, a pint Seagram’s in a brown paper bag, and the manuscript of a half-finished novel. I didn’t want to wind up like that, so I quit, knowing that after telling everybody why I was leaving, I could never come back.”

What happened afterward: He moved back to Mobile, Alabama, where he grew up, where he wrote books that included the novel Forrest Gump. The movie version won six Academy Awards and made a bestseller of the book, which sold more than two million copies.

What you can learn from his experience: Countless writers — most famously, Ernest Hemingway — have realized they needed to leave daily journalism to write fiction. Most of the newspapers they worked for have died, including Groom’s Washington Star.

But no matter what kind of work you do, if you want to write novels, you may need to leave before the salary is too hard to give up. Not everyone has the discipline of John Grisham, who got up at 5 a.m. each day to work on his first novel, A Time to Kill, before going off to his full-time law practice.

@JaniceHarayda is an award-winning critic and journalist in Alabama. She has been a writer an editor for Glamour, the book editor of Ohio’s largest newspaper, and a vice president of the National Book Critics Circle.

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