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    Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job
    Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job
    Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job

    By Bryan Cohen

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Writer on the Side is a time management, positive thinking, long-term goal creating, personal effectiveness improving, success manual for the author wannabe trapped in a 9 to 5 (or some other exceptionally long time-frame) line of work. Just because you have to pay the bills does not mean that you can't find creative success and get things done outside of working hours. Take control of your life by learning tips and tricks to help you focus on writing productivity inside and outside of work.

    The book goes through your entire work day from beginning to end with sections on your morning, afternoon, evening and weekends so that you can mine whatever time you have for writing gold. Filled with a plethora of ideas that have helped the author write his own books in his spare time, Writer on the Side can help you to be more productive and to be a happy and healthy author, no matter what you do for a living!

    Writer on the Side takes the time management of writing to a whole new level by including ideas so that you can manage your energy more effectively as well. Not only will a trip through the book get you on the right path for creating your writing goal, but it will also help you with stress management, re-purposing your subconscious mind and therapeutically ridding yourself of negativity.

    Author Bryan Cohen's books on writing and self-help have sold over 5,000 copies.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBryan Cohen
    Release dateApr 11, 2011
    ISBN9781458028471
    Writer on the Side: How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job
    Author

    Bryan Cohen

    Bryan Cohen is a writer, actor, director and producer who enjoys dabbling in both theatre and film. Bryan graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2005 with degrees in English and Dramatic Art with a minor in Creative Writing. He has written or co-written the plays Chekhov Kegstand, Something from Nothing, Kerpow! and The Morning After. He founded the website Build Creative Writing Ideas in late 2008 and he currently serves over ten thousand users a month. Bryan is a full-time freelance writer and he currently lives in Chicago, Illinois.

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    • 4/5
      Some good tips, many not new to me. But to some, many of these ideas may be revolutionary. Nice breakdown of the workday and the weekend for how to carve out time in your day. I like that he pays attention to more than just the writing. Writers are whole people, and the rest of their lives needs attention if they're going to be successful. Otherwise, those things you try to ignore will just keep getting in the way.

    Book preview

    Writer on the Side - Bryan Cohen

    WRITER ON THE SIDE:

    HOW TO WRITE YOUR BOOK AROUND YOUR 9 TO 5 JOB

    By

    Bryan Cohen

    SMASHWORDS EDITION

    * * *

    PUBLISHED BY:

    Bryan Cohen on Smashwords

    Writer on the Side:

    How to Write Your Book Around Your 9 to 5 Job

    Copyright 2011 by Bryan Cohen

    Discover other books by Bryan Cohen:

    1,000 Creative Writing Prompts: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/34347

    Sharpening the Pencil: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50078

    500 Writing Prompts for Kids: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50319

    Smashwords Edition License Notice

    This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

    * * *

    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Chapter 1: My Story

    Chapter 2: Wanting It

    Chapter 3: The Morning

    Chapter 4: The Afternoon

    Chapter 5: The Evening

    Chapter 6: The Weekend

    Chapter 7: Going All The Way

    Chapter 8: The Next Step

    About the Author

    Introduction

    I spoke with a friend a few weeks ago. I won’t name names, but I had the fortune of travelling with her and about 20 other members of my English Department classmates to Oxford, England during one college summer. The subject of our journey across the ocean was Shakespeare, one of the most prolific writers ever. One sunny day (and it was particularly sunny that summer in England, thankfully) we all sat in a graveyard at the University and took turns reading all of Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. We also saw or read many of his 37 plays. The trip was enlightening and I am certain that it inspired me in part to be an actor and a writer.

    When I spoke with my friend recently, the subject of book titling came up as I was attempting to figure out the title for my second book, a collection of essays. She presented me with a title idea for her own book, which I won’t write here for fear of it being stolen. It was fantastic and it perfectly fit her personality and writing style. She then stuck a giant spike into the side of her circus tent of an idea, deflating it and sending it crashing to the ground.

    Of course, I’ve titled ten thousand books that will never get written.

    At first, the motivational writer in me wanted to say hundreds of different pieces of advice that would lift her up and make her want to start writing her fantastically titled book. After a few tidbits of wisdom slipped out, I realized to myself that I had once thought the same thing. I once believed that I would never be a real writer. I believed I would never publish or self-publish something that other people would care about. Something changed for me, and I’ll get into that a little bit later in the book, especially in the My Story section in Chapter 1.

    Life is a Long Time

    Here is the thing about becoming an author. Some people, beyond all odds, if they have the ability to write, will become writers much, much later in life. They may have had another career for several decades of their lives. They may have been a housewife or househusband taking care of their families well into arthritis, heart-healthy diets and becoming grandparents. They may have even been part of a traumatic experience or two that made them believe they couldn’t do anything anymore, let alone write a book that people would read.

    There are countless stories of these supposed late bloomers in the history of English writing. Anthony Burgess, famous for his book A Clockwork Orange did not publish his first novel until the age of 39. Joseph Conrad didn’t even know English until he was around 21 years old, but after writing in the language around the age of 32, he was still able to publish such great works as Heart of Darkness after the age of 37. Author Laura Ingalls Wilder become a newspaper columnist in her forties, but did not begin publishing her novels until her sixties, with the Little House on the Prairie series.

    How many of these people do you think had to push back internal and external criticism along the lines of you’ll never get this done or you’re not a writer, you’ve been doing something else your entire life? Personally, I’ve dealt with internal doubting that felt heavy enough to knock over an elephant. When I left college, I struggled with depression and a lack of personal meaning. I was working a 9 to 5 job doing data entry while I took some improvisational comedy classes. The classes were great, but between a large commute and feeling soullessly empty during the job, I remember thinking to myself, You’re wasting your life! I was 22, and I already thought I was done for. How’s that for dramatic?

    But that’s the thing. We hear all these stories of child prodigies and authors like Stephen King who are so prolific, who write so much, that we assume if we haven’t started yet, we’ll never get to the finish line.

    We need to start choosing our comparisons better. If we’re going to compare ourselves to someone we should compare ourselves to authors like Laura Ingalls Wilder or Anthony Burgess, who had no writing published at all until they were close to or past the age of 40.

    The real trick though, is to realize that writing a book is not a race. It’s more like a journey of self-discovery. It’s like climbing a mountain alone that nobody has ever climbed before. There is no fastest time award or anything like that. You are climbing that mountain and there is no comparison at all. If you take two months or 20 years, you will still be in first place because nobody has written your book, nobody has climbed your mountain.

    But I’m Too Busy

    Many of you will read the above and your response will be, you’re full of crap! I completely understand this reaction because it took me several years of reading and listening to what I needed to hear to become an author and to get motivated to write before I truly believed it. For you wonderful people, who need a truck to hit you to make you realize you might not be headed in the right direction, just read on and hopefully you’ll see the headlights bearing down.

    Some of you will have a different reaction. You will acknowledge that you do want to write. You want to be like these late bloomers (or early bloomers depending on how old you are when you read this) who have gotten something published or self-published. You want to be an author! Your response to this desire, however, is something along the lines of But, I’m too busy!

    Not to sound too much like a salesman, but this is the book for you! (cue infomercial audience applause)

    At least, this book was written for you, the few, the proud, the people who want to be authors but like most of the world have jobs that either run from 9 to 5 or that generally take up 40 or more hours in your week.

    I’m here to tell you that it is possible to become an author despite most of your time being taken up by working and sleeping. Even if you have a family and you spend your additional free time taking care of your kids, your spouse and your bills, it is possible to become an author. Now, obviously, the less time you have, the longer it will take, but you still have a shot to get that book that’s been bouncing around your head onto the page.

    Some of you chosen few will respond like the earlier group with the phrase, You’re full of crap! Which is perfectly fine; I have developed a thick skin to such silly, non-specific criticism. Those of you who are still on board might ask the productive question of, What do I need to make this happen?

    The three things you need are desire, time and tools.

    Desire is simple and complicated at the same time. Desire means that you want to do this and that you’re willing to push past all of your fear and obstacles to make it happen. The fear and obstacles are what make desire complex, because many people will succumb to these road blocks and never achieve their loftier lifetime goals. Getting to the level of desire necessary to write a book will be covered in Chapter 2 called Wanting It.

    By time required for writing, I’m not referring to eight hours a day and I may not even be referring to eight hours a week. I simply mean that you are willing to put aside a little bit of time, perhaps even 15 minutes a day toward straight up writing. If you are constantly overwhelmed and you are hard pressed to find any time

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