I was an editor for four years. I hated it. It sucked all my writing ability out of my brain and did its best to bore me to death. I also was barely making enough to live on.
I'm lucky, as writers go. I'm never going to make a living writing, and I've come to realize that's a good thing, because if I could, I would. And I would become a depressed, crazy hermit and never leave my apartment. My writing would also suck. Lucky for me, I have other interests, and I decided for a variety of reasons to go into wildlife conservation. I started looking for wildlife jobs, got an internship, quit my nice, steady, boring editing job, and discovered that I should've been working out in the woods all along.
Of course, now I'm struggling like hell to line up my next wildlife job (I'm on the second now; they're almost all temporary, and pay less than peanuts). And I will probably never make more than the bare minimum for groceries and rent. So, you know. Financially, it was a terrible decision. But as for my sanity, it was the best decision I've ever made. And I'm writing more now, too.
So, my advice? Pick something totally unrelated to writing. Save the writing and editing skills for your own writing instead of exhausting them at work.
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Date: 2007-12-18 03:04 am (UTC)I'm lucky, as writers go. I'm never going to make a living writing, and I've come to realize that's a good thing, because if I could, I would. And I would become a depressed, crazy hermit and never leave my apartment. My writing would also suck. Lucky for me, I have other interests, and I decided for a variety of reasons to go into wildlife conservation. I started looking for wildlife jobs, got an internship, quit my nice, steady, boring editing job, and discovered that I should've been working out in the woods all along.
Of course, now I'm struggling like hell to line up my next wildlife job (I'm on the second now; they're almost all temporary, and pay less than peanuts). And I will probably never make more than the bare minimum for groceries and rent. So, you know. Financially, it was a terrible decision. But as for my sanity, it was the best decision I've ever made. And I'm writing more now, too.
So, my advice? Pick something totally unrelated to writing. Save the writing and editing skills for your own writing instead of exhausting them at work.