One of the common questions people ask me about, is how I can write at a day job and then come home at night and write again. During the day I typically write anywhere between 1,000 to 3,500 words. When I go home at night, I usually try to write the equivalent of a page of text (500 words) or edit 10 pages of text. My written work usually averages to 50,000 written words a month, or one-third of a novel.

So how am I able to do this?

Well, the nice thing about having a day job that heavily involves writing is that I don’t worry about things like rent or food anymore. I feel more secure in my job simply because I’ve been a writer as long as I can remember–even though I, like so many other writers, have had major setbacks.

Job security has always been a big concern for me because simply, I am extremely creative yet analytical at the same time. Just like someone else’s passion might be their music or sport or research, my happiness is fueled by the written word. In previous employment, where writing has not been a big component of my position, it showed that while I was serious about the job–I had a difficult time staying at a job I didn’t enjoy.

In this day and age, it is extraordinary difficult to find a job in the creative industry that will pay you enough to live on. Most requirements for writing positions vary from region to region, and in my area every writing position that I applied for as a fresh, college graduate required a minimum of 5 years of experience. It was as if no one could believe that someone young could write well. After trying and failing and trying again, I gave up on finding a writing position and followed a different path. I spent years building my portfolio and learn more about writing as a career.

This is not the first writing position I’ve had; I’ve been a professional freelance writer on-and-off for almost 10 years. In the past, few years I’ve either had a day job-plus-freelance writing, or I’ve written from home full time. The nice thing about writing during the day in an environment outside of your home, is that you learn what discipline really means. I don’t have an excuse not to write–I am always “practicing” my writing skills because I always have a deadline. Happily, I can honestly say that I love my day job.

Throughout the years, I’ve met hack writers, passionate people who claim to write but never do, people who try to compete with me as a writer, and so many other would-be professionals that give this craft a bad name. Worse than not being able to find a positive network of other writers, when you work in isolation you lose your inability to interact with people. In this job, which may be different from other copy writing positions, there is a team-based element to it which is unlike several of the creative projects I typically work on. In so many of the projects that I write for, I brainstorm, I write an outline, and I provide a product. Not so with copywriting, because having a sense of humility is essential to working with others and doing my job well.

You may decide that copywriting isn’t right for you; maybe you’d rather edit or become a technical writer. Or maybe you find out the hard way that writing during the day sucks your creativity and you’d rather be a professional bartender to give yourself the break. Whatever choice you make, don’t base your decision on other writer’s experiences, base it on what you really want to do. How did I do it? By remembering two essential pieces of wisdom: Know thyself, and know thy market.