If I were to compose a list of my most frequently asked questions, close to the top would come: Are you a full-time writer? Hmmm. No short answer to that. But ‘part-time’ can sound amateurish; ‘occasional’ smacks of no serious intent; ‘full-time’ is a big claim. So what am I?

I don’t have any other paid employment, it’s true, but then, neither do I spend all day every day writing. I am sometimes to be found working on a novel at 3am … 4am … and in no time it’s 5am. But equally I may be taking an elderly friend out for coffee at 10.30am, or assembling a gateau for guests at 4pm.

It’s hard to define ‘work’ in my line of business. There was no interview for the post, no job-description. It might not always be obvious to a casual observer that I am working even when I seriously am. My mind can be mulling over a plot, or conjuring up characters, or creating dialogue, whilst my body is cruising between islands off the coast of Norway, or winkling dessicated grapes out from under the freezer, or digging holes to Australia on the Fife sands with gorgeous grandchildren, or, as this week, wrapping a minor mountain of Christmas presents. Sometimes I may be working when, to an outsider, I appear to staring into space … or even sleeping; when indeed even scientists studying insomnia would swear I was sleeping. Problems unravel and plots thicken when the subconscious is left to resolve tricky situations. I habitually wake ridiculously early (4am today) and find my mind so busy that I have to keep jotting down the ideas that flood my brain before they are lost for ever.

So, what does constitutes work for an author? It’s certainly more than simply typing words.
• There’s reading – an essential occupation. All kinds of – books (fact and fiction), literary journals, newspapers, research articles, official reports.
• Writing itself: not just the novels themselves, but newspaper columns, articles for journals, replies to readers’ emails and comments
• Oh, and this jolly little weekly blog
• Trawling through other people’s blogs to check how it should be done – is that counted as part of my job?
• Reviewing other people’s books
• Keeping in contact with colleagues – more effort for hermits whose office is home
• Engaging with the big outside world: meetings, conferences, book signings
• Visiting my publisher, editor, agent
• Filing medical-ethical news items
• Going for treatment from an osteopath to remedy the problems of too much sitting hunched over a computer writing
• Filling in my self-employed tax return …
I won’t bore you with the exhaustive list, but you get the general idea. They all feel like legitimate parts of my professional life whatever they look like to a dispassionate observer. Only, the beauty of my flexible job is that I can do all these things at any hour of the normal working day, and still write my novels at any hour of the night.

So the answer is, I don’t know. What I do know is that I don’t get paid a regular salary no matter how many hours I work. Not yet at any rate! Maybe therein lies the clue.

Now all I need is a placard to hold up when someone asks if I work full-time: VISIT MY BLOG OF 10 DECEMBER 2009.

Tags: writing as occupation