112 Book Review: Writer with a Day Job
A dear friend of mine gifted me this awesome book Writer with a Day Job: Inspiration & Exercise to Help Your Craft a Writing Life Alongside Your Career. The author Aine Greaney is a writing coach and has several books and other published works. I love getting books as gifts and as soon as I saw this title, I lit up immediately. So far, I’ve the read the book twice. As a professional with a full time job and launching a writing business, I found this book’s content relevant and inspiring. This book has helped me:
1. Set goals for freelance writing. I am a goal digger so this section of the book really resonated with me. Setting lofty goals, executing, and analyzing results is a big part of what I do in my day job. I think as a freelancer, specialty for something creative like writing, its been tough for me to quantify success. Examples of writing goals include: mapping out a writing plan, how much writing I want to accomplish (words/pages), target editors/publications, and revenue generated.
2. Get writing done anywhere and anytime. I am often on the go and have access to technology such as an Mac, iPad, and my iPhone. The book give examples of how writers find time to write. One of Aine’s students wrote the first draft of his novel in his car during his lunch break. That’s right…wrote a book people. This got me thinking about how I easily find time to read. I read 112 books last year because I always had a book with me and during any moment of free time, I’d whip that sucker out and read. So I create that same experience now with my computer or iPad. I’m getting better at tuning things out and writing anywhere just like I used to read anywhere.
3. This book is full of writing exercises to help me practice. Some of my favorite exercises from this book: 1. look at a resume and a create fictional character about who this person must be. 2. write an introduction of how you would introduce yourself to a stranger. 3. write the scene of the audience at your book launch party (love this one).
4. Proofread and revise better. I’m in the process of going through older posts and making corrections. This section gave me the idea to freshened up content from 112books.com. The tips in this book have helped me remix and freshen up old work for book reviews. This section also talks about patience. I need that in life certainly, but also with my writing. As a side hustler, I have limited time and need patience with myself to produce my absolute best work. I cannot just write and post, I need to proof read and revise. That takes patience.
These are just a few of the goodies I got from reading Writer with a Day Job by Aine Greaney. Though my passion is writing, I think some of these tips could be followed by many creative types out there.
-J
