Monster Whispering for Writers
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• your first book
• the perfect poem, or
• the first draft of a script for TV?
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Sample issue (March 2010)
And the award for Best Actor in an Office Drama goes to…
Now that the Oscars are over for another year, maybe it’s time to look at how acting figures in your own life – especially if you’re a writer trapped in a dead end job.
Just before pushing open that office door each morning, do you become an entirely different person? If there was an award for Best Fake Show of Enthusiasm in a Workplace, would you taking home the little gold statue?
Sadly, impersonating Employee of the Month won’t win you any life-changing awards. It probably won’t lead to limousine rides and free designer clothes. But it just might interfere with your real career – your writing…
If pretending you actually enjoy filing, and dealing with complaints from the public is wearing you out, you might want to re-think how much effort you want to invest in a routine job. Do you really need to pull off a gala performance for a job that’s the equivalent of a straight-to-DVD movie?
You may have forgotten the basic, brutal bottom line of working in a day job when you’re really a writer.
The day job exists to fund your real career.
It has to facilitate your writing, not make you want to hide in your trailer and never come out. If you don’t feel like impersonating the seasoned greats like Meryl Streep or Morgan Freeman every weekday, then don’t.
You could instead just keep your head down, and go through the motions of the workday. This approach involves far less energy. It won't wrench out your soul like the demands of method acting.
But remember: scaling down your daytime acting efforts doesn’t mean you have to turn off the creative juices entirely. When you have two coffee breaks per day plus a lunch hour and two commuting journeys, you probably have two hours’ worth of sanctioned creative time.
If you’re not busy rehearsing your lines for another afternoon at the office, you’ll have the energy and the focus to do the creative work that really does matter.
You can still smile occasionally at the Day Job Monster. You can be polite to workmates and even bosses. But you don't have to thank the Academy by 5 o'clock.
If you want to win an award, win it for your writing, not your acting.
