When I heard Julia Fox say, “I hate working, I hate work, doesn’t everybody though?” it wriggled into my brain like a parasite. It fed on idle moments where I’d stare out the window at the dahlias and think about where I’d find the time to swaddle them in mulch before the frost.
She became a default setting. Whenever there was a gap in thought, there she was. Reminding me that I’d never read Wuthering Heights, never tasted pastéis de nata warm from a Portuguese oven, that it was nearly tomato season, and I hadn’t sown a single seed.
I used to believe freedom meant mornings with no alarms and afternoons in a local café with the light falling just right across the page. But freedom is expensive, and work felt like the villain standing between me and my imagined life.
But because I’m so chronically online, it didn’t take long for another quote to find me. Given its transformative effect on my perspective, you would think I would have saved it or remembered where it came from, but no. So here’s the paraphrased sentiment:
Having a decent-paying, consistent job, one that doesn’t take too much from you emotionally or in time, frees you from the burden of worrying about making your writing profitable. It allows you to make art. For the rest of your time, you have the liberty of a rich man.
Suddenly, I began to see the 9–5 not as an enemy, but as a patron, a quiet benefactor underwriting my creative life. I’m my own trust fund baby, baby.
Sorry, are you calling your Substack art?
Yes, I am, more so perhaps than writing projects like short stories for competitions or the book I’m working on. The thing about art and creativity is that it doesn’t have to be any particular way. It’s play. And what is having a Substack about everything and northing all at once if not play?
And as my fellow Substackers know, the core part of ‘being a writer’ is to actually write.
“Oscar Wilde said that some things are too important to be taken seriously. Art is one of those things. Setting the bar low, especially to get started, frees you to play, explore, and test without attachment to results.”
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
When I sit down to write creatively, no one is waiting. No pay packet depends on the quality of the words, and no editor refreshes their inbox. I write for the joy of it—or should I say, the excruciating agony of it. In Imitations, Zadie Smith talks about how writing is about control—about examining ideas and parts of life and putting them down on paper, how your eyes see them. Its interrogating, and analysing. It’s tying your mind in knots over whether the garden was lined with peonies or roses.
“It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.”
Enid Bagnold
I want to chase ideas that interest me. To write things that are *not good* and learn from it. To build a practice. To make writing my ‘way of being’.
Writer (non-practicing)
I actually also write for work, but it’s not the same. If I told my 12-year-old self this, she would be delighted. But shortly after, I would have to explain the ever-churning content mill, SEO, AIO, spreadsheets, Asana, strategy meetings, and “ can you make it more punchy?”.
I think you need to achieve a level of maturity to accept that a 9-5 isn’t really what’s holding you back. I didn’t write creatively for years. I thought that copy and creativity couldn’t co-exist. That I would need years off and a room of one’s own to produce anything of note.
There’s a scene in Lena Dunham’s Girls that haunts me. Hannah gets a glossy job at GQ writing advertorial. The snacks are free, and the pay is good. But then she discovers that all her colleagues, sharp, brilliant, credentialed, rarely find time to write outside of work anymore. They are writers, non-practicing, past tense.
In a classic Hannah spiral, she quits to protect her “real” writing. And yet, even without the job, she can’t bring herself to practice writing. Now she’s broke, frustrated, and creatively blocked.
Sometimes the enemy isn’t the 9–5. It’s the myth that freedom guarantees art, and the waiting for freedom to find you.
My writing routine
Getting up at 5 a.m. isn’t for everyone, but it is for me. I’m at my best in the morning, so I give my best to writing. My phone alarm blasts from the other room, and I’m on my feet before I can decide to hit snooze. In the bruised black of the Scottish morning, I let my dog out to the garden while I make coffee.
Then, I grab my laptop and we both get back into bed. Not quite the writer’s desk I dreamed of.
Henry’s gentle snoring is my favourite soundtrack. Sometimes, I light incense and watch the smoky haze as the morning light creeps in. I get 2-3 hours of writing done this way before getting ready for work.
Working from home is a privilege. But the price you pay is missing out on the mundane beauty of daily life. Writing doesn’t work in a vacuum, so I introduce things that force me to leave the house. Work from the library for a few hours, post a Vinted parcel, get coffee and chat with the barista.
At lunch, we get fresh air and walk in the park, or by the river, or (Henry’s least favourite) while running errands. I try to schedule meetings for the afternoons, when my brain needs a bit more interaction.
My evenings are unscheduled. Sometimes I go to a gym class, meet a friend, visit my Gran, do some DIY. I’ve done my writing, I’ve been to work. I’m a free woman.
Now, I know there are so many things here that allow me this freedom: no kids, a remote job, living alone, and no caring responsibilities. I don’t want to tread in ‘same hours a day as Beyonce’ territory because I understand this setup is almost miraculous.
What I’m trying to demonstrate with the routine outline is that you can make your writing habit – or design, embroidery, dance, music, anything – not just your hobby or side hustle, but your real way of being.
But you actually have to do it. Squeeze it in. Commit to it. Give it the time of day when your energy is best. If you don’t have that time to give, do what you can.
“All that matters is that you are making something you love, to the best of your ability, here and now.”
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
Epilogue
At 4:56 pm, my home office is quiet. I start my close-down routine: thank a co-worker, pick one task to tick off in the morning, check tomorrow’s meetings, drink water.
There is relief in the ritual, in knowing I will take my little dog and walk out into air that smells of rain and pavement. That the day has ended. That for 16 hours, I’m rich in time and liberty.
Work is not the enemy. It is the scaffolding that holds me steady enough to write.
Intriguing perspective. Many feel that work is an anchor that ties them down. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. As long as it gives you the freedom to create and enough to survive, then the work can be just what you need to explore as an artist.