Creators Need Support, Not Another Hustle

If you're a regular reader here, or if you know a creative professional in your daily life, chances are you're already well aware of the struggle most of us face. Whether we're trying to sell books, get reads on our articles, hustle for Patreon patrons, or a dozen other things it can often feel like we're dancing on the edge of a volcano, and that we might fall in at any moment.

The volcano in this metaphor is capitalism, and there's no safety net to stop us from being burned up like an evil ring at the end of a trilogy if we miss a payment.

Capital has but one master, and it answers to no other!

And while there are a lot of folks out there who are willing to give advice, I want to take this week to ask you to please, pretty please, stop suggesting that we pick up "side" jobs or "real" jobs until we make it. Because you're not helping, and if possible you're making things worse.

Before I get into the nitty gritty details of that, though, remember to subscribe to my weekly newsletter if you want to stay on top of all my content. Also, if you want to help me stay on top of my own bills consider becoming a Patreon patron!

A Side Job? Oh If Only I'd Thought of That...

If you have a friend, family member, or even just a close acquaintance that's a creative professional, chances are good you've let fly with this sentiment at some point. You've probably wondered why the simple solution of just picking up a few shifts at a local grocery store or gas station until they break big hasn't occurred to them. After all, it seems so easy. The author sacrifices a bit of time, they get an extra few hundred bucks a month, and they're not as worried about the performance of their work.

A win all around, right?

Just don't be poor? Shit, why didn't I think of that!

There's a lot of reasons why you're probably getting scornful looks from your creative friends if you've made this suggestion to them, either in-person or in text. So I want to take a moment to break down both why it's insulting, and the underlying message that it conveys to them since it's something the person making the suggestion rarely thinks about again, but which will stick with the creator for months to years afterward.

First and foremost, let's talk about the tone of the suggestion. It's often presented as a simple solution to one's problem, as if somehow the creator in question doesn't know what wage labor is, and hasn't even considered it as an option. Secondly, the suggestion is usually presented as something that's easily achievable, which it often isn't. Even if there are businesses hiring in someone's area (far from a guarantee), there may not be any that are willing to offer the schedule a creator needs, to be understanding with their requirements (you can't go to shows and conventions if your job won't give you weekends off, for example), or which will compensate them fairly for their efforts.

Thirdly, and this is the category I often find myself in, a creator only has so much time and energy in a given day. If they are suddenly using that time and energy to perform labor for someone else (and especially if it's labor they hate, find difficult, or which is extremely draining for them), they aren't going to be able to make art at the same rate they were before. In some cases it's possible that this "side" job siphons out all their energy entirely, making it impossible for them to keep making their art at all.

As the song says, being a rock star is a fun job, but it's still a job. And when someone is already giving their all to push a rock up a hill, you showing up and suggesting they put on this pair of ankle weights as if that will somehow make things easier is not helping.

There's Also The Underlying Message We're Hearing

In the interest of absolute clarity, I'm not talking about when a friend offers a writer a job as a stringer for a news site they have connections at, or brings them on as a short-term editor so they can get a fast paycheck to cover their bills. I'm talking expressly about when someone suggests you simply go out and get a standard, minimum wage, part-time gig that has nothing to do with your creative field, but which is meant to supplement and support your creative efforts. Because a different message is being sent in these two situations that people who think they're being helpful might not realize.

If someone offers you a job using your craft, what they're saying is, "I value your talent as a professional, and I trust you to get this job done for me."

If someone just suggests you go pick up a few shifts as a clerk, or find a part-time security officer gig, though? The message there (whether you intend it or not) is, "Well, clearly your art isn't worth anything on its own, so go get a real, grown-up job if you insist on following this dream."

As we all know, subtext is often present whether we want it there or not.

If you think the artist you're about to talk to creates good art, and that they should have the time and resources to create more of it, they don't need you telling them to spend their energy on other things. What they need is you to hold out your hand, and help them make those ends meet.

Because talent is meaningless when it comes to the success of art. We rise and fall, live and die, by whether we have an audience that supports us. Period, end of story.

Again, if you have money, you can support your creative friends directly. Buy their art, become patrons, and make sure your cash goes directly toward helping them. If you don't have money to give, though? Boost their signal using your voice. Share their art on your social media pages, leave good comments, and tell your friends and family members about them. Help them reach a larger audience so that they can get the eyeballs (and patrons) they need.

That might not feel like a lot, but I'll give you a concrete example of how this could snowball.

Seriously, go check this out!

About a week ago I released the short story Devil's Night over on my Vocal page; a fun little fantasy tale about devil-worshiping fascists getting punched right in the face in the low-town district. It took me plenty of time to put together, but at time of writing it's gotten maybe 50 reads or so... which amounts to about 30 cents in my pocket.

On average, roughly 100-500 people read my entries on this blog. If 100 people out there read this short story, it would probably put another 50 to 60 cents in my bank account. But what if 100 people all went and shared it on their social media pages? Sure a lot of those shares might go unremarked, but with that many shares chances are good it would catch on somewhere, and reach a far wider audience. It's possible that it could spread, reaching hundreds (if not thousands) more eyes than I could ever reach on my own. For every one thousand people who read said story, I'd earn $6... and there are millions of potential eyes on those platforms.

Will all the people who read this article click through to share that tale? Probably not. But that one, concrete action taken by even a moderately-sized group of readers could have rather dramatic consequences for me as a creator. And it would be far more helpful than any advice that I just pull myself up by my bootstraps until something eventually got popular enough to pay me what I'm worth.

Be the change you want to see in the careers of the creators you like. It makes a far bigger difference than you know.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing!

If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, its sequel Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Uncertainty is The Worst (and The Best) Thing About Being an Author

The most common piece of advice I've heard since the point I decided to become an author (around age 13 or 14, I think it was), is that I need to have a reliable, steady source of income while I do that on the side. It's not that they didn't think I had the chops or determination to crank out books till the day I died, but rather that there's no telling what the market is going to do when it comes to a writer's trade. You might write one book, hit the lottery, and explode! You might spend a decade or two writing shelves worth of novels, only to become an "overnight success" when someone with a big following tells their fans your work is amazing.

And while most advice you get from people with no experience being a writer is basically garbage, there is a lot of truth to this one. Because writers are self-employed now more than ever before in the age of the gig economy, and your income is going to depend almost entirely on the fickle finger of fate. And I'll be the first to tell you that can be both infuriating, and exhilarating.

Pay your fee, take your shot, and hope for the best!

Before we go too much further, if you want to help me negate some of the uncertainty I'm dealing with (and make sure this blog keeps on trucking), consider becoming a Literary Mercenary Patreon patron! Or, if you don't have the spare dosh for that right now, signing up for my weekly newsletter to ensure you don't miss any of my new releases!

Reliability is an Illusion (Unfortunately)

One of the hardest truths there is about being an author is that your entire profession is largely a matter of luck. Talent helps, developing your skill and craft is necessary, networking is good, and gumption goes a long way, but everything you achieve (or don't) basically turns on the fulcrum of luck.

And this is a door that swings both ways.

Sometimes opportunity doesn't bother knocking.

As an example, take the current pandemic. I had spent several years building up a rather large pile of completed work as a ghost blogger, and it was slowly getting approved, ensuring I had a "regular" check to help bolster all the work I do writing novels, RPG supplements, blogs, and all that other nonsense. Then when the plague crashed across the economy, many of my clients put a freeze on approving any more work. Others cancelled projects (some of which I'd turned in weeks or months before), and still others just ghosted entirely, cancelling their orders and vanishing.

So practically overnight I went from a ghost writer who is hoping to one day quit that job to write novels and RPGs full time, to suddenly relying very much on my body of creative work to make up the difference from the "safe" clients who'd left me hanging.

You know, just like any other job where you're considered an expendable worker, or where the company suddenly takes a nose dive into concrete.

That same zeitgeist can go the other way, as well, putting a surprising amount of good fortune in my pocket when I didn't expect it to be there. For example, a few months back my article Partners and Polycules: Polyamorous Designations Based Off Dungeons and Dragons Dice was randomly shared on a pretty wide scale thanks to a single mention on a subreddit. It picked up several thousand reads, and quickly rocketed up to the front page of my most-read pieces ever on Vocal, suddenly easing my difficulties covering bills that month. In the early summer of 2020 Drive Thru RPG had a big sale on a huge number of World of Darkness game supplements, and overnight my entire 100 Kinfolk project that I'd written for Werewolf: The Apocalypse jumped in sales, pushing my earnings in royalties over $200 for the first (and so far only) time since I started getting a cut of my RPG earnings. I haven't gotten my first check for my noir mystery novel Marked Territory yet, but it's entirely possible that a mystery with a Maine Coon alley cat trying to figure out why a pack of stray dogs is putting the squeeze on a church mouse and her community sold far better than I expected it to.

And one of the hard truths of this job is that while you can tell the story, talk about the story, and try to spread the word, so much of whether or not you succeed is actually out of your hands.

You Can Only Do What You Can Do

Hitting the jackpot as a writer is basically being a professional gambler. You need to read the trends in fiction, understand your audience, learn to recognize interest, figure out what the social media algorithm wants to see from you, and do what you can to gather support from the community. But even if you crunch all the numbers, put your links in the right place, show up to interviews, do readings for your audience, at the end of the day you're basically just gambling. Every book, every blog, every supplement, every article is just one more roll of the dice.

As Captain Picard says, it's possible to do everything right and still fail, when all is said and done.

Even if the odds are on your side, there's no guaranteeing you're going to win. And even if the odds are against you, there's no guaranteeing you're going to lose. The best you can do is put the words on the page in the most compelling way you can, do everything to get it in front of the audience's eyes you can think of, and hope for the best.

Never depend on luck to see you through. At the same time, understand that it is often pure, unadulterated chance that happens to be what makes a book, blog, video, etc. popular. And getting struck by lightning ain't an easy thing to do.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my noir thriller Marked Territory, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

If You Want New Readers, You Need To Promote in New Places

There's an old saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results. This is particularly true when it comes to marketing your work. If you're one of those writers who is perfectly pleased with the amount of regular readers you have, and you're comfortable with all the readers and sales you have, then you can relax on your laurels and go back to what you're doing.

For those of us who need to grow our reader base, but can't quite figure out how to stimulate that growth, this strategy might be helpful for you.

Time to get out of those comfort zones, friends!

Because the truth is, a lot of us probably have our preferred social media platforms, and the groups we regularly post in on them. And you probably have an expected range of reactions from those groups... but if you want more, then it's time to broaden your horizons and widen your search.

Check For New Groups Every Few Weeks Or So

Finding new groups you can spread your signal to isn't easy. There's a lot of trial-and-error, and sometimes groups will be insular, or have clashes of personality with you. But that's the nature of the search! Just like your book isn't for everyone, not every group is going to be ideal for you.

Well, this one looks promising.

The thing to keep in mind here is that while several groups might share members, chances are good that you're going to be preaching to a mostly fresh choir when you show up and drop your book title, or share around other pieces of content. And even if a group is small, active discussion and involved members can make a big difference in just how high your signal gets boosted.

Also, Try Unexpected Groups (Results May Surprise)

For those who didn't catch my Vocal piece 5 (Specific) Tips For Increasing Your Vocal Reads Using Social Media, I would highly recommend giving it a quick perusal when you've got some time. However, the 5th tip on it is one that I've found has been quite useful for me, so I wanted to draw special attention to it.

Try some sideways thinking to find communities who might be interested in your work, but which you might not normally think to share your work in.

Hey, new guy, come on in!

The example I gave in the article was my movie fan theory found in What is The Monster in "The Ritual"? If you haven't seen the movie, it's a horror film about friends getting picked off in the woods in Scandinavia, and one of the cultists we meet tells us the thing is a jotun, a child of Loki. I had a head canon about which specific creature in Norse mythology it was, and when the article came out it was middlingly popular in the horror groups I shared it to on social media.

But it exploded when I shared it in on a few mythology pages.

The difference, in this case, is that the film was fairly well-known in the horror circuit by the time I put my thoughts onto the Internet. However, there was not a great deal of overlap between people browsing mythology pages, and people who hunkered down to watch horror movies about monsters in the woods. So there was interest, activity, and a lot of sharing because the piece was relevant to their interests, and told them about something no one else in their community was talking about.

It remains my most widely-read article in my Vocal archive, with several times the reads of the next most popular article.

This same logic, which I talked about in Sell Your Book in Unexpected Places (You May Be Surprised at The Results), has generally worked out to my advantage when I've expanded the areas I look at for promotional purposes. If you have a modern fantasy story where your protagonist is an einherjar, and they have to deal with giants and draughr, then you should definitely be sharing that book in mythology and Norse enthusiast groups, as well as in fantasy groups. If your main character is a cat, then you might find some interested readers in groups about cats, pets, and pet cats.

And so on, and so forth.

It's All One Big Gamble

Like I said in Luck Makes Your Career (But Persistence Makes Your Luck), there are no guarantees when you're trying to promote your work. You might spend hours carefully wording and crafting just the right post for no one to care, only for a throwaway comment of yours to immediately catapult you to overnight Internet celebrity. You can crunch all the numbers, but the best you can make is an educated guess.

With that said, you miss all of the shots you don't take. So roll the dice, and keep rolling them as often (and in as many places) as you can. Sooner or later the number you want is going to come up.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Just Because You're Having Fun, That Doesn't Mean You Shouldn't Get Paid

I have come to the conclusion that no matter who you are, if you expect to get paid for something that other people do for fun, you are going to get a lot of angry messages on your social media feed. I was recently reminded of this when I published the post What Does It Take To Be A Professional DM?, since about half the comments left on it were some variation of, "how about you not be a piece of shit, and try to make money off something people do to have fun?"

Of course, you know, this means war!

It is worth noting that no one who read that post claimed that being a dungeon master was easy (because it isn't). No one argued that it doesn't take skill to be a dungeon master, or that it didn't take time, energy, and investment to make sure an entire table of players had a good time. The main source of outrage, paraphrased, was that the commenters were willing to do all that stuff for free, and for their personal enjoyment. So anyone who participated in that hobby as a for-profit enterprise was clearly doing it wrong, and they should be shunned for polluting the purity of a fun hobby by twisting it into a source of income.

Think about that for a moment. Someone who is willing to do a difficult job that is often in demand, spending copious amounts of their own time, energy, and often money to provide a positive, engaging, entertaining experience for other people should never, ever make a profit off of that. They should just enjoy the activity, and that's that.

Replace being a dungeon master with being a blogger, a video creator, an author, a painter, a sculptor, or any other creative activity, and you'll get much the same result. Without fail.

Your Job Isn't Supposed To Be Miserable, You Know

Kara Dennison recently hit the nail on the head with her post Creativity For A Living: The Curse of The Jobbing Hobbyist. The post touched on the usual suspects, such as how it's hard to be creative on a deadline, and how difficult it is to get people to see that art is neither frivolous, nor a luxury, but that it is a necessary good that's consumed in huge quantities every day. However, the third point in the post is one of the most important, I think.

Simply put, the money you're paid is for your time, and your effort. It is not to compensate you for doing a job you hate, or that makes you miserable.

There is no fringe benefit that can stop making me feel empty inside.

This is something a lot of folks overlook. The main reason they overlook it, I feel, is that when someone writes, draws, or plays a game as a hobby, they tend to do it for their own amusement. You draw when you feel like it. You write when you're inspired. You're not thinking about what would get the most hits on social media, or what would look good on a tee shirt, or wondering if you can finish the project fast enough to get it on the slate before the next convention, because it's not about all that. It's about you, and your personal enjoyment.

Now, that isn't to say that creative professionals don't enjoy the work we do (I wouldn't put out as much content if I didn't enjoy holding forth on all these topics). However, a lot of people think that because we enjoy our jobs, that should be payment enough. After all, they hate their jobs, so why should we make money for doing something they would gladly do for nothing in their free time to relax?

Because, to re-iterate, you are not paid for enduring something you don't want to do. You're paid because you put in the time and effort to do your job.

The Other Reason is People Need To Be Taught To Value Art

If you go to a restaurant, you can always tell the people who have worked as wait staff in the past. They're understanding, they know how to talk to their server, and they always tip. Even if the service wasn't great, they know how hard the job is, and they understand how tough it can be to make ends meet, so they always leave a gratuity.

Always.

You can also tell the people who have not had experience working in a restaurant, or who have never had friends or family members who worked there. They tend to be the people who are demanding, pushy, and who won't leave a tip unless their server went above and beyond, acting more like a personal servant than a staff member. Because, as they rationalize, that server will make minimum wage if no one tips them enough to go over, so not tipping them isn't really hurting them.

The problem creative professionals run into is that a lot of people have worked in the service industry, or have friends who have worked in it, so they empathize with the struggle. They understand how much work goes into that job, and they value it. However, if someone views writing a book as something you do on your own time, for fun, then they aren't going to think twice about just downloading a free copy off of a pirate site. If someone thinks that drawing is something you do to unwind at the end of the day, then they don't hesitate to right-click on a digital gallery and steal an image for their own use. Because, hey, this person should be happy someone like you values their art enough to take it, and use it. You made it from passion, and that creative experience should be enough payment for you. Never mind the long hours you put in, or the fact that you own the legal copyright to that work, because it would just be selfish of you to expect to be paid in real money on top of all those feelings of accomplishment.

Of course, the truth of this situation is that when someone is a creative professional, we aren't just sitting around indulging our own fancies all the time. We are creating art specifically to enrich the lives of others, to make statements, and to provide experiences. We write books, we make films, we whisper into a microphone for a podcast, but we don't do that just to amuse ourselves. We crunch the numbers, we research the market, we hustle at conventions, we invest time, effort, and money into building the brand, and we do our best to provide something of value.

That's exhausting. But sometimes just having someone come up and say, "Hey, I really like what you're doing. It's good. Keep it up!" is the most rewarding thing that can happen. With that said, if you can afford to drop a dime into someone's Patreon jar, you should maybe do that, too. Share the links, buy the merch, leave reviews, and if you value what someone does, help give them the support to keep doing it.

Speaking of which, if you enjoyed this latest Business of Writing post from yours truly, why not head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to become a patron today? For as little as $1 a month, I'll even throw in a free book or two as a holiday thank you! Lastly, to stay on top of all my releases, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, too.

You Don't Need A Degree To Be A Writer

I remember when I was a teenager, and I made the decision to be a writer. I was already a voracious reader, and thanks to extra credit assignments I was passingly familiar with writing short stories for my English classes. So I took the next step, and started writing out of school, putting together stories and universes in the clumsy, excitable way most writers do when they take their first steps. Several years passed where I made progress, and my enthusiasm for the written word remained undimmed. Then I realized I was approaching that mystical age of 18 where I was going to be expected to go to college and choose a career.

I knew what I wanted to do. Problem was, I didn't have the first clue about how to do it.

Unfortunately, no one else seemed to know, either.

The problem with being a writer is that it's one of those jobs people know exist, but they have no idea what the hiring process entails. It's like being a fashion consultant, or a bounty hunter... there are people who get paid to do these things, but the general population scratches their heads regarding how you get that job. Most folks assume that writing is one of those things you train for at college. After all, that's where journalists and media people get their skills, so why wouldn't it be the place you go to get your degree in creative writing?

You can do that, if you are one of those fortunate people who have a lot of money laying around, and you need to spend it in a hurry. If you actually want to work as a professional writer, though, then that degree isn't going to be worth the paper it's printed on, much less the checks you wrote to the bursar's office.

There's No Universal Way To Be The "Right" Writer

Most careers you go to college for have some kind of universal standard you're being trained to. If you're a doctor, then you're learning how to diagnose illnesses, how to perform surgery, etc. If you're a lawyer then you're learning how the law functions, how to argue within the bounds of the legal system, and what the rules governing our actions really are. Whether your major is research or telecommunications, teaching or psychology, you are learning the skills and rules required to do a given job. A job that is going to be performed within a certain set of boundaries you need to be trained into.

The problem is there are only three rules to being a good writer... and no one knows what the hell they are.

They were lost in the great ruin of Answeria, where dwelt the winning lottery numbers, and the key to successful marriage.

Taking creative writing courses can be helpful, don't get me wrong. You can learn about the elements of story, get feedback on your work, and most importantly, get practice writing (and completing) stories. You can talk to people who have more experience than you, who have been on the inside of the industry, and whose creativity plays well with yours.

With that said, you can achieve all of those things on your own without paying the costs of college classes. You can sign up for writing symposiums, get a writer's group together, go to conventions, read blogs and books by authors telling you about their experience, and submit your work to forums and other places to get feedback. You can learn just as much, and make just as many publishing connections, that way.

Lastly, though, a creative writing degree is useless for a specific reason; publishers aren't buying your degree. They're buying your book.

Will People Buy Your Book?

A degree is a statement that you have been trained by a university in a given field. Even if it's just a welding certificate, your school is stating that you have the skills to do a particular job. Which is great... but a college's assurances isn't what publishers are buying.

This is more what they're interested in.

Publishing is an old-school trade, in the sense that your employers are buying your work. They don't care where you learned to produce it, who taught you, or who you studied under. What they care about is if you can do the job. So if you can write stellar magazine copy that gets readers to actually subscribe and take an interest in a publication, the editor isn't going to care if you got your degree at Princeton, or Cornfield U. Most of the time the publisher doesn't even care if you went to college at all. They only care about one thing.

Can you do the job?

No one can teach you how to write a compelling novel, or short story. You can't get a red stamp that makes you an ace reporter, or which guarantees you can write great product descriptions. Nothing can make you a great script writer... except one thing.

Practice.

Once you go through the process enough times, you'll find something unique happens; people start coming to you. Whether it's readers who want more of your stories, or publishers who have seen your other work and want to hire you, nothing guarantees your tomorrow like the work you put out today.

So sit down at that keyboard, and bleed. Then just keep doing that, day after day, until you get where you want to be.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing post. Hopefully it helps the writers out there who are wondering how the rest of us do the job, and it stops you from making a foolish decision. If you want to make sure you don't miss any of my updates, then follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. If you want to help support me and my blog, then head over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page. All I ask is $1 a month, and I'll give you both my everlasting gratitude along with some sweet swag to call your own!

Routine is Great For Writers, But Terrible For Your Story

I've mentioned in the past that, for a time, I was an editor at a small press. The way my contract worked was that I received no money up-front, but I would be given a small percentage of the royalties when the book was released. It wasn't an ideal situation, but I figured that if I edited good books with potential, and if I edited enough of them, then I could count on a fairly regular check. The problem, of course, was that small presses aren't flooded with brilliant novels written by the next genre leaders; they're beacons for slush.

It's like this, only significantly more unpleasant.

While slogging through that slush I remember one particular story. In this story our main character was a veterinary assistant, she lived on a small hill in a small town, and rode her bike everywhere. She would ride into work in the morning, have lunch at a cafe, do some grocery shopping after work, and then ride her bike home to make dinner. I remember this cycle specifically because it was repeated over, and over, and over again. In the first half of the book (all I managed to read) the reader was dragged through her completely pedestrian routine no fewer than four times. She didn't run into mysterious figures in the bread aisle, or receive a tape that would self-destruct with her coffee... she just trundled through her boring-as-shit life waiting for something to happen to her.

The Never-Ending 9-5

Most of us live our lives based on routines. We go to work, we come home, we sleep. We go to the gym three days a week, and we work out at the same hour every time. Some of us even eat lunch at the same goddamn place every day when our break comes up. The point of a novel, though, is to focus on the things that move your plot along, and which contribute to the story. So if Stacy is a waitress, we should see her go through her average workday one time in chapter one or two. If Tom is going to college, then show us his class schedule and mention the course load he has to establish that he isn't neglecting his responsibilities. Once you've established that your lead has a job/vocation, though, it's time to focus on the plot.

But then an ancient order of assassins recruited Tom into their ranks, and he never graduated.

This doesn't mean that you immediately jettison your lead out of his or her routine, but it means that you do not focus on it anymore. If Stacy is at work then it should be because something happens while she's there, or because she's about to be called away by the mysterious young man who left a bizarre stone on her table as a tip. Tom might be in class, but while his chemistry professor is droning on, he's replaying the strange events of the previous evening and drawing out timelines in his notebook.

The focus isn't on washing dishes or taking notes; it's on driving the plot forward. Work, school, etc., cease to be important. The regular routine of your character's life is the background of the play, but it should not be center stage.

Also, if you end every chapter with your lead going home and going to sleep, then chances are you really need to spice up your story.

Uses For Your Background

I'm not saying you shouldn't establish who your character is, and what they do. Those are important traits, and in the case of cop thrillers or private detective stories that's what the book is about. Not only that, but by following your lead around to his or her job you get a sense of the world around them. You know whether the story is set in a small town, or in the depths of dark, dirty city. If you're writing sci-fi or fantasy story, though, then your lead's daily life is one, big piece of exposition. Whether they're building space ships or serving in the town militia, everything your lead sees and does, every conversation they have, is going to lay the ground work for the world around them.

The shrouded ruins of Old Neve were forbidden... and horrors dwelt within.

In addition to showing us the world, though, your lead's day-to-day gives us an insight as to who he or she is. By watching them in their natural environment we see if someone is dutiful or clever, lazy or cantankerous. We see what they excel at, and what they fail at. However, all of this is setup to your book, and not the book itself.

Put another way, people would be really interested in a compelling story about Detective Jack Warner, and how he has to navigate his own strengths and weaknesses to solve a triple homicide that might mean indicting one of the most powerful men in the country. By contrast, no one would be overly interested in a book where Detective Warner makes traffic stops, writes tickets, gives depositions on open-and-shut spousal abuse cases, then goes home and ticks another day off work until retirement.

Your character's routine is like the fiber in your diet. Yes, you need to have some, but no you don't want every chapter to be bland, boring bowls of cereal.

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